rejection

American  

[ri-jek-shuhn] / rɪˈdʒɛk ʃən /

noun

• rejections
  plural

1. the act or process of rejecting.

   Synonyms:

   elimination, dismissal, refusal

2. the state of being rejected.

   Synonyms:

   elimination, dismissal, refusal

3. something that is rejected.

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rejection Cultural  

1. A process in which the immune system of a body attacks an organ or tissue, either its own or tissue transplanted into it from another organism. (See xenotransplantation.)

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Discover More

Rejection is the most serious problem faced in surgery involving organ transplants. Drugs are used to suppress the immune system after organ transplant in order to prevent the rejection of and eventual death of the transplanted tissue.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• nonrejection
  noun
• prerejection
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• rejections
  plural

Etymology

Origin of rejection

First recorded in 1545–55; from Latin rējectiōn-, stem of rējectiō “a throwing back”; equivalent to reject + -ion

Explanation

The noun rejection can refer to the actual act of rejecting something or to the feeling one has after being rejected. In other words, you might have feelings of rejection after experiencing the rejection of others. The Latin noun rēicere, which means "to throw back," is the ancestor of the word rejection. Nobody likes to feel the rejection of being excluded. The word rejection became popular in psychology in 1931, when parental rejection was seen as a motivation of bad behavior in children. The word found a medical meaning by 1943, as the body's refusal to accept a transplant.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

rejection rejections

But their rejection in parliament last week prompted Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to call a snap election for November 29 in which housing will feature prominently.

From Barron's ● Oct. 7, 2026

Conditional approval is better than a rejection, but the message from the state and the county is fairly consistent: Making the necessary cuts will be hard and detrimental; not making them would be disastrous.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2026

But polling groups such as Datafolha, one of Brazil's most respected institutes, suggest that this election has been a battle of rejection rates.

From BBC ● Oct. 5, 2026

You are not going to like this answer, but I do wish someone had plainly explained this reality to me when I was younger: There is no way to date without risk or rejection.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 25, 2026

Even the most intimate songs of Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn soften raw emotion with a poetic image - rejection being portrayed as an iced-up lake, or happiness as a bird singing.

From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall

He took these rejections hard at the time.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2026

After 23 years of struggle and 60 rejections, I’d sold a hardcover memoir to Random House that led to a series of books.

From Salon ● Aug. 24, 2026

Ultimately, the White House pushed public health officials to re-examine the FDA’s repeated rejections of the Replimune drug, The Wall Street Journal reported.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 6, 2026

Most have decades of experience in senior roles and say they've submitted countless CVs, only to receive automated rejections or no response at all.

From BBC ● Aug. 5, 2026

After all of the recent rejections, this assessment of my potential ignited a spark that I thought had long since been extinguished.

From "Proud" by Ibtihaj Muhammad

Related Words

• elimination
• exclusion
• repudiation
• veto