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rebuff
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show 156 more with this conextual meaning
  • When she tensed, he said, "Suit yourself," and rolled over, and this left her feeling rebuffed.†   (source)
  • Carlisle's firm rebuff was directed toward James.†   (source)
  • Bloom told him about the rights he had acquired in Paris and how the exposition had rebuffed his petition.†   (source)
  • Trish was not sure what made her more uncomfortable—helping Katherine Solomon hire a hacker …. or calling a guy who probably still found it impossible to believe a pudgy, redheaded metasystems analyst would rebuff his romantic advances.†   (source)
  • If she argued with a neighbor constantly over a barking dog, if she was forced to rebuff a flirty guy, whatever you got, I need.†   (source)
  • As a boy he had seen the havoc they had wreaked in the house of Lazara Conde, a schoolteacher who dared to rebuff the animes, and he had seen the watery trail of glass in the street and the mountain of stones they had thrown at her windows for three days and three nights.†   (source)
  • It's just that in this other dimension he gets all screwed up and is rebuffed by it.†   (source)
  • He would eventually come to be rebuffed by his own body at least as much as by hers.†   (source)
  • Perry, his eyes glitteringly immense in a face now almost phosphorescently pale, studied the ceiling; and presently, after placing a picture postcard on the patient's bedside table, the rebuffed visitor departed.†   (source)
  • Meanwhile, Percy had risen to praetor, but he had rebuffed Reyna too.†   (source)
  • As a doctor's wife I knew that, too, but he would listen to no one and rebuffed all attempts to help him.†   (source)
  • With this in mind I presented a shiny red apple to an African warder who looked at it and stonily rebuffed me with the phrase "Angiyifuni" (I don't want it).†   (source)
  • (He starts to kiss her, she rebuffs him again and he jumps up) BENEATHA: Why are you angry, George?†   (source)
  • She sounded so disappointed-and looked so forlorn-Eragon felt guilty for rebuffing her.†   (source)
  • Then he drove me back to my house, rebuffing my halfhearted protests by promising to get me back to my car the next morning.†   (source)
  • When I explained to my friends and family that I was moving to San Francisco and would be working and traveling for the magazine, they were uniformly surprised and suspicious of my new job, but I rebuffed their questions, adopting the air of a woman of mystery.†   (source)
  • The magus couldn't have been rebuffed by the barkeep, so I assumed that he didn't want me baiting his apprentice.†   (source)
  • Rebuffed from his fine feelings, Milkman matched her cold tone: "You loved those white folks that much?"†   (source)
  • All his requests were rebuffed.†   (source)
  • He grew awkwardly into a tall, strange, dreamy boy with fragile eyes and a very delicate mouth whose tentative, groping smile collapsed instantly into hurt disorder at every fresh rebuff.†   (source)
  • When Hema tried to get Genet to go back to LT&C, Rosina rebuffed her.†   (source)
  • "Not another word," he said, waiving the rebuff off.†   (source)
  • Before the nurse could rebuff me, however, I saw Christian coming down the hall with another doctor.†   (source)
  • The few lonely men who had made advances had been rebuffed kindly but firmly, and in one case not very kindly.†   (source)
  • In reply, he advised prudent preparations for war, in the event of another rebuff.†   (source)
  • Their uncle heard the rebuff.†   (source)
  • Sebastian's forces were rebuffed.†   (source)
  • Since his mother's passing, he simply ignored Peter Varga and rebuffed every attempt at friendship.†   (source)
  • It was no longer possible for her to answer coolly, to rebuff with aloofness.†   (source)
  • And I needed a woman who was in no position to refuse my advances, to dishonor and rebuff my initial fervent confession of love.†   (source)
  • During the mad days of August, the attorney Giuliani had expressed the sudden desire that his only son should go to America, but Alessandro rebuffed all efforts to remove him from danger, protesting that only a few months remained before the confirmation of his doctorate, and that he had to be present for the final examinations.†   (source)
  • Occasionally one would reach out to me with missionary zeal, but I'd rebuff that person with haughty silence.†   (source)
  • One actress even tried to kill herself after he rebuffed her advances.†   (source)
  • What had made him unwilling to talk to other humans (except strictly business) was that he had been rebuffed: They had not talked to him.†   (source)
  • The woman rebuffed all questions and attempts at conversation, leaving Natalie to stare out her window at the minarets rising above the West Bank towns just beyond the Separation Barrier.†   (source)
  • I met no rebuffs, only gentleness when they informed me they could not use my services as typist, bookkeeper, etc. The patterns became the same.†   (source)
  • Rebuffed from the west, he began hatching a scheme to ship Uncle Charlie south.†   (source)
  • None of these people seemed to mind being rebuffed or being hustled out of the shop by Metty; some of them came again.†   (source)
  • Where Aron was received, Cal was rebuffed for doing or saying exactly the same thing.†   (source)
  • Remembering his rebuff of a year ago, even though it had been his mother, Rufus was afraid to speak of it.†   (source)
  • JAMIE Rebuffed and hurt, shrugs his shoulders.†   (source)
  • I do not know why, after a year of such rebuffs, I so completely failed to anticipate his answer, which was, of course, "We don't serve Negroes here.†   (source)
  • And if Dick felt as if he had been denied, rebuffed, made to appear brutal and foolish, then his sense of guilt told him that it was no more than he deserved.†   (source)
  • The peace emissary we sent was rebuffed.†   (source)
  • "Lady Artemis rebuffed him, of course," Phoebe said.†   (source)
  • His response was instant but quickly followed by his rebuff.†   (source)
  • Which means that Cersei has already ordered Bywater to release Pycelle, and been rebuffed.†   (source)
  • She immediately applied for permission to visit me and was rebuffed.†   (source)
  • They were rebuffed by some kind of protection spell, something even the Council didn't know about.†   (source)
  • Tyrion rather suspected that Lord Tyrell might come to regret this rebuff.†   (source)
  • And Dick, rebuffed and let down because of her withdrawal, ceased to appeal to her.†   (source)
  • By repeatedly rebuffing the friendly advances of her new Wizarding neighbors, she soon ensured that her family was left well alone.†   (source)
  • I was not sure what could be accomplished by means of tenacity and little else, but the target was set high and each rebuff only saw me more determined to see at least one major dream through to itsfulfillment.†   (source)
  • Kendra, of course, had rebuffed Bathilda when she first attempted to welcome the family to the village.†   (source)
  • Chamberlin claimed later that this attorney had been so angry at having his recommendation rebuffed that he tipped Holmes to the fact the creditors were again leaning toward arrest.†   (source)
  • But no man of the time would have braved the ridicule of looking young at his age, even if he did or thought he did, and none would have dared to confess without shame that he still wept in secret over a rebuff received in the previous century.†   (source)
  • The difficulty was that time passed and the letters continued to arrive, one every three or four days throughout the year, and she did not know how to return them without that appearing to be the rebuff she no longer wanted to give, and without having to explain everything in a letter that her pride would not permit her to write.†   (source)
  • Maia was in one corner of the room, bent over and retching, her hand braced against the wall; Jordan hovered over her, looking as if he wanted to reach out and stroke her back, but was afraid of being rebuffed.†   (source)
  • On New Year's Day, driven mad by rebuffs from Remedios the Beauty, the young commander of the guard was found dead under her window.†   (source)
  • Thrice at least Lord Tywin had offered to buy Valyrian longswords from impoverished lesser houses, but his advances had always been firmly rebuffed.†   (source)
  • Renesmee took a deep breath and then peeped out from under my hair, her little shoulders tight, expecting a rebuff.†   (source)
  • I suppose he felt rebuffed.†   (source)
  • 'No,' Yossarian rebuffed him harshly.†   (source)
  • The salvation of a soul, namely Perry Smith's, was an enterprise the deeply Catholic undersheriff and his wife were eager to assist-although Mrs. Meier had been rebuffed by Perry when she had suggested a consultation with Father Goubeaux, a local priest.†   (source)
  • "Sebastian doesn't exactly appreciate being rebuffed," he said slowly, and Luke felt his nerves tighten.†   (source)
  • I thought that was rebuffed.†   (source)
  • My first overtures of friendship with the people on the island, although not rebuffed, failed to win me any friends with whom I felt completely comfortable.†   (source)
  • I smelled the sun-softened asphalt, smelled the summer odors of clover, swallowed the rebuff and drove on.†   (source)
  • Yet it was a very confident voice, as if it were sure that the person who was being addressed would approve what was said and what was asked, and would not rebuff him as he had rebuffed their mother.†   (source)
  • And as a few strokes on the nose will make a puppy head shy, so a few rebuffs will make a boy shy all over.†   (source)
  • Yet it was a very confident voice, as if it were sure that the person who was being addressed would approve what was said and what was asked, and would not rebuff him as he had rebuffed their mother.†   (source)
  • It was a day of giving the gracious smile and receiving the gracious rebuff as I asked again and again about jobs.†   (source)
  • I wondered whether the colonel would take this rebuff; so did he.†   (source)
  • He was never rebuffed or criticised because he never went an inch out of his orbit.†   (source)
  • "I said I didn't want to talk about it," she said coldly but Alex did not seem rebuffed.†   (source)
  • There is deep sympathy and goodwill in Britain - and I doubt not here also - towards the peoples of all the Russias and a resolve to persevere through many differences and rebuffs in establishing lasting friendships.†   (source)
  • He had a tendency when he was rebuffed in an undertaking to stubbornly push all the harder straight for it, whereas a Japanese would more tactfully look for some way around.†   (source)
  • Even after that rebuff a very pious neighbour woman had tried to say a word to Sada through the alley door of the stable, where she was unloading wood off the burro.†   (source)
  • As a protective mechanism, I developed a terse, cynical mode of speech that rebuffed those who sought to get too close to me.†   (source)
  • There is deep sympathy and goodwill in Britain - and I doubt not here also - towards the peoples of all the Russias and a resolve to persevere through many differences and rebuffs in establishing lasting friendships.†   (source)
  • Startled, at first abashed, Charles blushed at the rebuff and then, seeing how her eyes were fastened on his sister, he smiled.†   (source)
  • …most fantastical exhibitions of print-vending ever seen: fortified by his own unlimited cheek, and by the pious axioms of the exhortations that "the good salesman will never take no for his answer," that he should "stick to his prospect" even if rebuffed, that he should "try to get the customer's psychology," the boy would fall into step with an unsuspecting pedestrian, open the broad sheets of The Post under the man's nose, and in a torrential harangue, sown thickly with stuttering…†   (source)
  • The aloof houses rebuffed his woe.†   (source)
  • 'That's Manderley,' she said, and I remember coming out of the shop feeling rebuffed, yet hardly wiser than before.†   (source)
  • Leo rebuffed him impetuously.†   (source)
  • Rex, in the comparative freedom of London, became abject to Julia; he planned his life about hers, going where he would meet her, ingratiating himself with those who could report well of him to her; he sat on a number of charitable committees in order to be near Lady Marchmain; he offered his services to Brideshead in getting him a seat in Parliament (but was there rebuffed); he expressed a keen interest in the Catholic Church until he found that this was no way to Julia's heart.†   (source)
  • The only ways in which I felt that my feelings could go outward without fear of rude rebuff or searing reprisal was in writing or reading, and to me they were ways of living.†   (source)
  • Dr. Sasaki, never in his life having experienced such a rebuff, had decided that this was the girl for him, and with the help of two persistent go-betweens he had eventually won the wary parent over.†   (source)
  • And she could understand his shrewd caginess, so like her own, his obstinate pride that kept him from admitting his love for fear of a rebuff.†   (source)
  • My zeal made me forget these rebuffs, for I was sure that an atmosphere of trust would be created as soon as I had explained my project to them.†   (source)
  • He patted her shoulder timidly, gingerly at first, and when she did not rebuff him he became bolder and patted her firmly.†   (source)
  • Cunning hints inviting confidence she rebuffed with violence.†   (source)
  • Since my rebuff of yesterday I have a sort of empty feeling.†   (source)
  • That was his rebuff to Duane—his slap in the face to an interfering ranger service.†   (source)
  • Never again did she expose herself without due consideration and precaution against rebuff.†   (source)
  • Margaret had given instructions that no one who mentioned her name should ever be rebuffed.†   (source)
  • The woman's resentment of the rebuff seemed to spur her lagging ideas.†   (source)
  • They had not told her that word of Miles's rebuff to Vida had spread through town, a cyclonic fury.†   (source)
  • She almost trembled at the audacity which might have carried her on to a terrible rebuff.†   (source)
  • He paused and I said, "But will not the Count take his rebuff wisely?†   (source)
  • But I am going to ask him, at the risk of a rebuff, because I want to make things a little better.†   (source)
  • Examples of such rebuffs were far too numerous to count.†   (source)
  • She realized that she was a novice, and felt as if a rebuff were certain.†   (source)
  • Lily thought she understood the reason of the rebuff.†   (source)
  • One or two slight rebuffs, and the bravado disappeared.†   (source)
  • Henchard shut up her argument with a sharp rebuff.†   (source)
  • Clyde turned, while Fred made the best of the rebuff by merely looking at Sondra, whom he admired so very much.†   (source)
  • Mr. Riach, perhaps from caution, would never suffer me to say another word about my story; the captain, whom I tried to approach, rebuffed me like a dog and would not hear a word; and as the days came and went, my heart sank lower and lower, till I was even glad of the work which kept me from thinking.†   (source)
  • I have seen him wringing his hands after such a rebuff, and I am sure the annoyance and the terror he lived in must have greatly hastened his early and unhappy death.†   (source)
  • Very few of them had the nerve to face the rebuffs that they would encounter by trying to get into the buildings to interview the bosses; if they did not get a chance in the morning, there would be nothing to do but hang about the saloons the rest of the day and night.†   (source)
  • A fear of rebuff prevented him from affability, and he concealed his shyness, which was still intense, under a frigid taciturnity.†   (source)
  • MacCann went briskly to and fro among the students, talking rapidly, answering rebuffs and leading one after another to the table.†   (source)
  • She met with painful rebuffs, the most trying of which had been in a manufacturing cloak house, where she had gone to the fourth floor to inquire.†   (source)
  • If Hans Castorp had asked the director for permission to carry out his eccentric plan, he would have been rebuffed in no uncertain terms.†   (source)
  • Their rebuffs made her haughty; her haughtiness irritated them to franker rebuffs; they were working up to a state of painfully righteous war when they were saved by the coming of food.†   (source)
  • He was plainly expectant of a rebuff, and he was just as plainly surprised when her teeth did not flash out at him in anger.†   (source)
  • All these concessions and rebuffs of fortune, of late, had wounded his spirit severely, and his temper had become extremely irritable, his wrath being generally quite out of proportion to the cause.†   (source)
  • It was true enough that he was sometimes naive to a degree in his curiosity; but he was also an excessively cunning gentleman, and the prince was almost converting him into an enemy by his repeated rebuffs.†   (source)
  • He was horribly mortified; and the fact that Dunsford, whom he looked upon as a very pleasant but quite stupid fellow, had passed made his own rebuff harder to bear.†   (source)
  • Silver, I should say, was allowed his entire liberty, and in spite of daily rebuffs, seemed to regard himself once more as quite a privileged and friendly dependent.†   (source)
  • He had tried to bring up the subject of this latest death with his tablemates, but had been met by a unanimous rebuff so sullen that he felt both chagrined and outraged.†   (source)
  • It was notorious that the Salon had refused pictures which were afterwards famous; it was the first time Philip had sent, and he must expect a rebuff; Flanagan's success was explicable, his picture was showy and superficial: it was just the sort of thing a languid jury would see merit in.†   (source)
  • If she was careless of his affections she was plainly jealous of his pocket; and in that fact Lily read the explanation of her rebuff.†   (source)
  • Likewise playing a role was his own spiritual need to take suffering and death seriously, to pay attention to them, a need he hoped would be nourished and satisfied by his getting closer to the seriously ill and dying, as a way of counteracting the numerous rebuffs such a need received daily, even hourly, wherever he turned—including some of Settembrini's insulting pronouncements, which only reinforced his own craving.†   (source)
  • Lily's blood tingled with the grossness of the rebuff; but she checked the first leap of her anger, and said in a tone of gentle dignity: "I have no one but myself to blame if I gave you the impression that my decision was final."†   (source)
  • It was not so much the particular rebuff which she had just experienced, but the whole abashing trend of the day.†   (source)
  • But then they both turned back to the other disputant, who had just been rebuffed—Hans Castorp, in fact, with such eagerness that he placed both elbows on the table and propped his chin in one hand, much as he had when drawing his pig, so that he was staring from close up directly into Herr Naphta's face.†   (source)
  • The next day he resorted to the same effort, experiencing a variety of rebuffs and one or two generous receptions.†   (source)
  • He knew he should have to go slowly, and the instincts of his race fitted him to suffer rebuffs and put up with delays.†   (source)
  • She did indeed leave cards in plenty; she kept herself, with a smiling and valiant persistence, well in the eye of her world; nor did she suffer any of those gross rebuffs which sometimes produce a wholesome reaction of contempt in their victim.†   (source)
  • She suspected that her rejection rankled among the most unforgettable of his rebuffs, and the fact that he knew something of her wretched transaction with Trenor, and was sure to put the basest construction on it, seemed to place her hopelessly in his power.†   (source)
  • First, M. and Madame de Saint-Meran incurred his displeasure, so he poured out three drops of his elixir—three drops were sufficient; then followed Barrois, the old servant of M. Noirtier, who sometimes rebuffed this little wretch—he therefore received the same quantity of the elixir; the same happened to Valentine, of whom he was jealous; he gave her the same dose as the others, and all was over for her as well as the rest.†   (source)
  • Mr. Glauber went home seriously indisposed at his rebuff, took a cooling draught, and is now quite cured.†   (source)
  • I almost expected a rebuff for this hardly well-timed question, but, on the contrary, waking out of his scowling abstraction, he turned his eyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off his brow.†   (source)
  • 'Yes, Doyce,' returned Clennam, 'at an end as far as your efforts and rebuffs are concerned, I admit, but not as far as mine are.†   (source)
  • The rebuff he had met with in his first attempt to win Lydgate's confidence, disinclined him to a second; but this news of the execution being actually in the house, determined the Vicar to overcome his reluctance.†   (source)
  • Having no excuse for lingering longer, I slipped out, while Linton was engaged in timidly rebuffing the advances of a friendly sheep-dog.†   (source)
  • Not so, however, with David Muir; accustomed to rebuffs, and familiar with the virtue of perseverance, he saw no reason to despair, though the half-menacing, half-self-satisfied manner in which he shook his head towards the retreating girl might have betrayed designs as sinister as they were determined.†   (source)
  • When it was a question of charity, he was not to be rebuffed even by a refusal, and on such occasions he gave utterance to remarks which induced reflection.†   (source)
  • When we left school he made advances to me; I did not rebuff them, for I was flattered, but we soon parted and quite naturally.†   (source)
  • "Now, ma'am, depend upon it," he said, "you couldn't do a better thing for either of 'em than to make yourself at home in their houses, even if there should be a little rebuff at first."†   (source)
  • "Thou hast it, De Bracy," said Front-de-Boeuf, well pleased with the rebuff which his companion had received; "the Saxon hath hit thee fairly."†   (source)
  • Roxy had for so many days nourished and fondled and petted her notion that Tom would be glad to see his old nurse, and would make her proud and happy to the marrow with a cordial word or two, that it took two rebuffs to convince her that he was not funning, and that her beautiful dream was a fond and foolish variety, a shabby and pitiful mistake.†   (source)
  • Camilla brightened when Miss Pocket met with this rebuff; and she murmured, as she plaintively contemplated Miss Havisham, "Poor dear soul!†   (source)
  • All eyes met her with a glance of eager curiosity, and she met all eyes with one of rebuff and coldness; she looked neither flurried nor merry: she walked stiffly to her seat, and took it in silence.†   (source)
  • And so at home he had established himself in business, and had invented and executed, and worked his way on, until, after a dozen years of constant suit and service, he had been enrolled in the Great British Legion of Honour, the Legion of the Rebuffed of the Circumlocution Office, and had been decorated with the Great British Order of Merit, the Order of the Disorder of the Barnacles and Stiltstalkings.†   (source)
  • Still she held up, in spite of these rebuffs, and tried to make a character for herself and conquer scandal.†   (source)
  • It was vain to try to read with such an inscrutable fixture before me; nor could I, in impatience, consent to be dumb; he might rebuff me if he liked, but talk I would.†   (source)
  • Not that Emmy, being made aware of the honest Major's passion, rebuffed him in any way, or felt displeased with him.†   (source)
  • After rebuffing Sir Huddleston Fuddleston, Miss Crawley ordered that Rawdon Crawley should lead her in to dinner every day, and that Becky should follow with her cushion—or else she would have Becky's arm and Rawdon with the pillow.†   (source)
  • Lily murmured reproachfully; but Mrs. Fisher pressed on unrebuffed.†   (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unrebuffed means not and reverses the meaning of rebuffed. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
  • …receptive, silent as they, Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought, Me toward the Mexican sea, or in the Mannahatta or the Tennessee, or far north or inland, A river man, or a man of the woods or of any farm-life of these States or of the coast, or the lakes or Kanada, Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies, To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.†   (source)
  • At length rebuff'd, they leave their mangled prey, And their stretch'd pinions to the skies display.†   (source)
  • If you're angry about that rebuff, You know nothing about a woman's love!†   (source)
  • I am an honest wife, but not a shrew, And I believe that a calm, icy glance Is quite enough to rebuff an advance.†   (source)
  • All unawares, Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb-down he drops Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour Down had been falling, had not, by ill chance, The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud, Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him As many miles aloft.†   (source)
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