Definition of "referent" [referent]

• A person or thing to which a linguistic expression refers. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "We have already seen this use generalised to descriptive titles of books, paintings etc (Reclining Nude; Portrait of a Lady …) Of proper nouns, Halliday has this to say “With proper nouns [the referent] is defined experientially: there exists only one, at least in the relevant body of experience … This means that typically there is no further specification … Proper names usually occur without any other elements of the nominal group”."
• "The hope is that, for a second person, that warning cry would produce the same referent, in other words, trigger the alarming thought “A cheetah is coming!”"
• "In terms of "the self," in other words, the speaker's dissolution into the referent is really her expansion from an ego to a collective (lore-ridden, nature-ridden) self."