verb

• (transitive) To quote; to repeat, as a passage from a book, or the words of another.
  "WikiLeaks did not cause these uprisings but it certainly informed them. The dispatches revealed details of corruption and kleptocracy that many Tunisians suspected, but could not prove, and would cite as they took to the streets."
• (transitive) To mention; to make mention of.
  "Until then, the Sunak administration remains a study in ineffectuality on multiple fronts, leading Goldsmith to cite, not unreasonably, “a kind of paralysis”."
• (transitive) To mention; to make mention of.
  "Citing the risk involved with being out as a gay person and a union activist while simultaneously dealing with racism, Susan notes that there are no out gays or lesbians of color in her local, though its membership is about 80 percent people of color."
• (transitive, law) To summon officially or authoritatively to appear in court.
  "According to the tribe’s chairman, rangers cited five of the demonstrators, who had traveled to Nevada from New York, Washington, California and the European country of Malta. The chairman did not say what they were cited for."

noun

• (informal) A citation.
  "We used the number of cites as a rough measure of the significance of each published paper."