Sense is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form. It is the collection of all the features of the linguistic form; it is abstract and de-contextualized. For example, the sense of the word “dog”is “a domesticated canine mammal, occurring in many breeds that show a great domesticated canine mammal, occurring in many breeds that show a great variety in size and form”. It does not refer to any particular dog that exists in the real world, but applies to any animal that meets the features described in the definition.

Reference means what a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical world; it deals with the relationship between the linguistic unit and the non-linguistic world of experience. If we say “The dog is barking”, we must be talking about a certain dog existent in the situation. The word “dog” refers to a dog known to both the speaker and the hearer. This is the reference of the word “dog”， in this particular situation.

It is a matter of the relationship between the form and the reality. In other weirds，Leech's conceptual meaning has two sides: sense and reference. Every word has a sense, i.e. some conceptual content; but not every word has a reference. For example， grammatical words like “and”，“if”，“but” do not refer to anything.