Word.ws English Dictionary

refused

Syllables: re·fused/ɹɪˈfjuːzd/

refused is the simple past and past participle of refuse.

Meaning of refuse

Verb (1)

refuse (third-person singular simple present refuses, present participle refusing, simple past and past participle refused)

  1. (transitive) To decline (a request or demand).
    • My request for a pay rise was refused.
  2. (intransitive) To decline a request or demand, forbear; to withhold permission.
    • I refuse to listen to this nonsense any more.
  3. (ditransitive) To withhold (something) from (someone); to not give it to them or to bar them from having it.
    • If we bang or scream they will spray us with some pepper or something else that's in an aeresol ^([sic]) can, and they wear gas masks, while the rest of us have to breathe the fumes in, and it makes us very sick and they refuse us medical treatment.1991 December 15, Saadia Everett, “Protest Beatings”, in Gay Community News, volume 19, number 22, page 4
  4. To throw back, or cause to keep back (as the centre, a wing, or a flank), out of the regular alignment when troops are about to engage the enemy.
    • to refuse the right wing while the left wing attacks
  5. (obsolete, transitive) To disown.
    • Refuse thy name.c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...

Verb (2)

refuse (third-person singular simple present refuses, present participle refusing, simple past and past participle refused)

  1. To fuse again, as with, or after, heating or melting.

See all 9 meanings of refuse

Questions about refused

What is refused the simple past and past participle of?
Refused is the simple past and past participle of refuse.
How do you pronounce refused?
Refused is pronounced /ɹɪˈfjuːzd/.

Words near refused in the dictionary

  1. refuse chutes
  2. refuse collector
  3. refuse collectors
  4. refuse-collector
  5. refuse-collectors
  6. refused
  7. refusednik
  8. refusedniks
  9. refusedst
  10. refusenik
  11. refuseniki

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: refused (page history and authors); refuse (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-refused.ogg.

Cite this entry: “refused.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/refused. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.