referend

Now, according to my dictionary, the word I'm looking for is “referent”, defined as follows.

1. Something that refers, esp. a linguistic item in its capacity of referring to a meaning.
2. Something referred to.

The problem is, the ending “-ent” clearly marks the word as a present participle, with literal translation “referring”. What I want is the objective noun, with translation “referred to”, and that word is “referend”.

In fact, I figure the second meaning of “referent” comes from a corruption of “referend”. After all, the spellings and sounds are similar enough.