- refer
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2 *resort, apply, go, turn3 Refer, allude, advert are comparable when they mean to mention something so as to call or direct attention to it.Refer, when unqualified, usually suggests intentional introduction and distinct mention{
a day or two later she referred to the matter again— Mary Austin
}{we may here again refer, in support of this proposition, to the plain and unequivocal language of the laws— Taney
}but often it is so qualified as to add the idea of judging to that of mentioning{inclined at times to give a subjective interpretation to mathematical-physical theories and to refer to them as fictions— Cohen
}Allude, though often close to refer in the latter's more general sense, distinctively implies indirect reference (as by a hint, a suggestive phrase, a roundabout or covert method of expression, or a figure of speech); it may suggest mere casual interest, modesty, timidity, or reticence in the one who alludes{fruit . . . gives him that intestinal condition I alluded to— Stafford
}{the traveling facilities alluded to . . . would date the story as between 1842 and 1844— O. S. Nock
}Sometimes, however, it connotes bias or ill will{proposals, which were never called proposals, but always alluded to slightingly as innovations— Mackenzie
}Advert, which basically means to turn the mind or attention to something (see ADVERT 1), is sometimes interchangeable with refer but in such use it may distinctively imply a slight or glancing reference interpolated in a text or utterance{regards as truly religious certain elevated ethical attitudes and cosmologies that Freud, when he adverted to them at all, regarded as too highbrow to be given the name of religion— Riesman
}{letters from Franklin to his wife's grandmother ... in which he adverted to having had to do with her education— Justice Holmes
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
