Word Direct Answers

What does "refuse" mean?

Refuse: (Mil.) To throw back, or cause to keep back (as the center, a wing, or a flank), out of the regular aligment when troops aras, to refuse the right wing while the left wing attacks.

Additional senses

  1. 2.To decline to accept; to reject; to deny the request or petition of; as, to refuse a suitor. The cunning workman never doth refuse The meanest tool that he may chance to use. Herbert.
  2. 3.To disown. [Obs.] "Refuse thy name." Shak.
  3. 4.To deny compliance; not to comply. Too proud to ask, too humble to refuse. Garth. If ye refuse . . . ye shall be devoured with the sword. Isa. i.
  4. 5.Refusal. [Obs.] Fairfax.
  5. 6.That which is refused or rejected as useless; waste or worthless matter.
  6. 7.Refused; rejected; hence; left as unworthy of acceptance; of no value; worthless. Everything that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly.
  7. 8.Sam. xv. 9.

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