character reference

1. 1.

   a formal recommendation by a former employer to a potential future employer describing the person's qualifications and dependability

   “requests for character references are all too often answered evasively”

   Synonymscharacterreference

   Broaderrecommendation

Questions about character reference

What does character reference mean?

character reference means "a formal recommendation by a former employer to a potential future employer describing the person's qualifications and dependability".

What is another word for character reference?

Close synonyms include character, reference. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is character reference a common word?

character reference is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.