diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 5bdca5bcee..a635ff7875 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 Package: knitr
 Type: Package
 Title: A General-Purpose Package for Dynamic Report Generation in R
-Version: 1.48.2
+Version: 1.48.3
 Authors@R: c(
     person("Yihui", "Xie", role = c("aut", "cre"), email = "xie@yihui.name", comment = c(ORCID = "0000-0003-0645-5666")),
     person("Abhraneel", "Sarma", role = "ctb"),
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 3edbaa54ff..63a7b33630 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,5 +1,9 @@
 # CHANGES IN knitr VERSION 1.49
 
+## NEW FEATURES
+
+- In-chunk references of the form `<<label>>` can be disabled via the chunk option `ref.chunk = FALSE` now (thanks, @jennybc @gadenbuie, #2360).
+
 ## BUG FIXES
 
 - In-chunk references of the form `<<label>>` should not be resolved if `label` is not found in the document (thanks, @jennybc @gadenbuie, #2360).
diff --git a/R/block.R b/R/block.R
index d863e229e4..4c46fbaedc 100644
--- a/R/block.R
+++ b/R/block.R
@@ -52,7 +52,8 @@ call_block = function(block) {
 
   if (opts_knit$get('progress')) print_block(block)
 
-  params[['code']] = parse_chunk(params[['code']]) # parse sub-chunk references
+  if (!isFALSE(params$ref.chunk))
+    params[['code']] = parse_chunk(params[['code']]) # parse sub-chunk references
 
   ohooks = opts_hooks$get()
   for (opt in names(ohooks)) {