What's the difference between rebuff and refusal?

Rebuff


Definition:

  • (n.) Repercussion, or beating back; a quick and sudden resistance.
  • (n.) Sudden check; unexpected repulse; defeat; refusal; repellence; rejection of solicitation.
  • (v. t.) To beat back; to offer sudden resistance to; to check; to repel or repulse violently, harshly, or uncourteously.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) So sensitive is the case that Hunt, his civil servants and advisers are expected to rebuff any external lobbying – so they can base their judgement only on a analysis of the public interest issues raised by the proposed deal that was completed by media regulator Ofcom today.
  • (2) A few months after the arms deal rebuff the prime minster announced a review of the Brotherhood’s activities in the UK.
  • (3) The chancellor, George Osborne, welcomed the news as a “milestone for the British economy” that will ease the pressure on household budgets as he sought to rebuff fears that the UK could be headed towards “damaging deflation”.
  • (4) AstraZeneca's chairman, Leif Johansson, who spoke to Cameron after issuing the rebuff, said: "We are showing strong momentum as an independent company."
  • (5) The point may seem to be simply describing Shylock’s implacability – but the fact that it occurs as Shylock is using logic and reason to rebuff the noblemen creates a link between his capacity for debate and the idea of him as inhumane, beyond empathy.
  • (6) On Wednesday, the Obama administration issued a fresh rebuff through the US courts to an ACLU request for information about targeting policies.
  • (7) The strident tone was illustrated by a startling public rebuff to Barack Obama.
  • (8) Within those tight restrictions, the defence has limited room of manoeuvre in attempting to rebuff charges that carry a maximum sentence of at least 150 years in jail or in the case of "aiding the enemy" life in military custody with no chance of parole.
  • (9) My first priority is to get rid of Stephen Harper,” he said in response to the Liberal leader’s rebuff.
  • (10) The prime minister is still stung by his embarrassing rebuff in 2013 when he suffered an international diplomatic humiliation by failing to win the support of parliament for a bombing campaign designed to sanction Assad for using chemical weapons against his own people.
  • (11) In a tough statement yesterday, John McCain said the Nato rebuff to Georgia "might have been viewed as a green light by Russia for its attacks on Georgia.
  • (12) That the detonation occurred 50 miles from the Chinese border, and after months of Chinese efforts to rekindle talks with North Korea, is a serious rebuff.
  • (13) Tucker, though, rebuffs the suggestions that his fingerprints are all over the scandal.
  • (14) The US secretary of state, John Kerry, delivered a sharp rebuff to both Israeli demands and those of Israel’s Congressional supporters in the wake of the agreement.
  • (15) In a clear rebuff to politicians who have accused judges of inventing novel legal precedents without reference to parliament, Lord Judge welcomed the report and observed: "Contrary to some commentary, unelected judges in this country did not create privacy rights.
  • (16) The schools plan is the sugar coating to the NRA's tough tactics, designed to show the organisation in a more positive light and to rebuff accusations that it is dedicated to blocking reasonable reforms that would make America safer.
  • (17) The initial stay granted by the US appeals court for the eighth circuit had come as a strong rebuff to Missouri which for the past seven months has been pursuing an aggressive executions policy in which it has carried out a judicial killing every month and imposed a ring of secrecy around its supplies of lethal injection drugs.
  • (18) Fear of facing Tymoshenko in a 2015 presidential battle is believed to be one of the main reasons for the president's rebuff of the EU.
  • (19) The rebuff came as critics in Buenos Aires accused Argentina's government of playing the nationalist card to distract from mounting domestic woes.
  • (20) In a rebuff to coal, oil and gas companies, Rachel Kyte, the World Bank climate change envoy, said continued use of coal was exacting a heavy cost on some of the world’s poorest countries, in local health impacts as well as climate change, which is imposing even graver consequences on the developing world.

Refusal


Definition:

  • (n.) The act of refusing; denial of anything demanded, solicited, or offered for acceptance.
  • (n.) The right of taking in preference to others; the choice of taking or refusing; option; as, to give one the refusal of a farm; to have the refusal of an employment.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) We were instantly refused entrance by the heavies at the door.
  • (2) There are widespread examples across the US of the police routinely neglecting crimes of sexual violence and refusing to believe victims.
  • (3) Such a science puts men in a couple of scientific laws and suppresses the moment of active doing (accepting or refusing) as a sufficient preassumption of reality.
  • (4) There were no deaths but one refused to have ketamine again.
  • (5) That’s a criticism echoed by Democrats in the Senate, who issued a report earlier this month criticising Republicans for passing sweeping legislation in July to combat addiction , the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (Cara), but refusing to fund it.
  • (6) She successfully appealed against the council’s decision to refuse planning permission, but neighbours have launched a legal challenge to be heard at the high court in June.
  • (7) Tony Abbott has refused to concede that saying Aboriginal people who live in remote communities have made a “lifestyle choice” was a poor choice of words as the father of reconciliation issued a public plea to rebuild relations with Indigenous people.
  • (8) The military is not being honest about the number of men on strike: most of us are refusing to eat.
  • (9) But employers who have followed a fair procedure may have the right to discipline or finally dismiss any smoker who refuses to accept the new rules.
  • (10) Republican presidential hopeful Scott Walker has refused to say whether he believes in the theory of evolution, arguing that it is “a question a politician shouldn’t be involved in one way or the other”.
  • (11) But in a setback to the UK, Somaliland, which broke away from Somalia in 1991, refused British entreaties to attend on the grounds that it would not have been treated as equal to the Somali government.
  • (12) Ten patients had been treated by adrenalectomy, one patient by radiotherapy of the hypophysis, and one patient had refused any treatment.
  • (13) What if the court of justice refuses to answer the question?
  • (14) The only thing the media will talk about in the hours and days after the debate will be Trump’s refusal to say he will accept the results of the election, making him appear small, petty and conspiratorial.
  • (15) A small band of shadow cabinet members have lined up to refuse to serve in posts they haven’t even been offered, on the basis of objection to economic policies they clearly haven’t read.
  • (16) The prerequisite for all champions is the refusal to cave in, so City's equaliser with only three minutes remaining was pleasing.
  • (17) Black males with low intentions to use condoms reported significantly more negative attitudes about the use of condoms (eg, using condoms is disgusting) and reacted with more intense anger when their partners asked about previous sexual contacts, when a partner refused sex without a condom, or when they perceived condoms as interfering with foreplay and sexual pleasure.
  • (18) As long as Israel refuses to cease settlement activities and to the release of the fourth group of Palestinian prisoners in accordance with our agreements, they leave us no choice but to insist that we will not remain the only ones committed to the implementation of these agreements, while Israel continuously violates them,” Abbas said.
  • (19) The people who will lose are not the commercial interests, and people with particular vested interests, it’s the people who pay for us, people who love us, the 97% of people who use us each week, there are 46 million people who use us every day.” Hall refused to be drawn on what BBC services would be cut as a result of the funding deal which will result in at least a 10% real terms cut in the BBC’s funding.
  • (20) These letters are also written during a period when Joyce was still smarting from the publishing difficulties of his earlier works Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” Gordon Bowker, Joyce’s biographer, agreed: “Joyce’s problem with the UK printers related to the fact that here in those days printers were as much at risk of prosecution on charges of publishing obscenities as were publishers, and would simply refuse to print them.