reject

Reject is a verb meaning to refuse to accept, grant, or endure; to dismiss as unacceptable or not suitable; or to discard or throw away. The term derives from the Latin reicere, meaning "to throw back," via Old French rejeter.

As a noun, a reject can refer to a thing or person that has been rejected, such as a rejected proposal or a rejected applicant. In manufacturing, rejects are items that fail quality criteria and are removed from the production line. The process of identifying such items is part of quality control and may be described as rejection.

Usage includes phrases like to reject an offer (to decline it) and to reject a theory (to deny its validity). Rejection is the noun form; "rejections" describe multiple instances. In social contexts, to reject can refer to spurning a person or idea, which can have social and psychological implications. In contract law, rejection terminates an offer, meaning the offeree cannot later accept unless the offer is renewed.

In statistics and computer science, rejection appears in phrases such as rejection sampling, a method to generate random samples from a distribution, and the rejection region in hypothesis testing, where observed data lead to the rejection of a null hypothesis.