tennis_ball wrote:
Maybe it actually means the he is the one to whom the school will refer. so he is called the "referee".
In this sense, I ask the school to refer to this person, so this person is the referee.
It is from the application forms of one of the finance degrees I'm looking at.
This is from Cambridge Dictionary:
referee (SUPPORTER) UK Show phonetics
noun [C] (ALSO reference)
a person who knows you and who is willing to describe and, usually, praise you, to support you when you are trying to get a job, etc:
She gave her college tutor as her referee to the interviewer.
It is correct if explained this way, isn't it?
Or is it because of its British English usage?
Hmm, weird. Clearly a difference between American and British English. That refers the the exact opposite person in this situation. I wonder how that came about (from an etymology standpoint.
It's common slang usage in American English to alter the ending of a word to "ee" to make it mean the target of something. For example, that little boy was the "hitter" and that other little boy with the black eye was the "hitee". That girl was the "kisser" and that boy was the "kissee". As the American definition states, the "referee" is the person being referred to.
Those British are tricky devils.