refusenik
/ɹəˈfjuznɪk/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.42 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
One of the citizens of the former Soviet Union who was refused permission to emigrate (typically but not exclusively a Jewish citizen denied permission to immigrate to Israel).
Slang
noun
A person who refuses to do something, usually as a protest; for example, one who refuses conscription or vaccination.
Informal
Example Sentences
- "The refuseniki say they don’t want to change anything in the U.S.S.R., only leave it."
- "In 1974, a handful of brave Soviet Jews haunted foreign embassies in Moscow hoping for exit visas. Refuseniks, they were called; the Brezhnev Government wouldn't let them out."
- "The refuseniki (those refused exit visas) were at the forefront of the dissident movement of the 1970s and a major irritant in US-Soviet relations until Gorbachev signalled a change in policy by allowing the veteran refusenik Anatoly Scharansky to emigrate in 1986."
- "Near-synonyms: recusant, decliner, dissenter, objector, protester, defier, maverick, nonconformist, rebel, renegade"
- "Hope in liberation can imbue the singular transgressive body-performativity as well as the performative uses of fallibilist pragmatic presuppositions of human communication action. This risky hope—it is another name for the coalitions and the communities among refuseniki—appears under the figures of a radically existential and multicultural democracy."
- "Richard Ellmann once referred to Samuel Beckett as “Nayman from Noland”—the author as national refusenik. Beckett famously refused to allow a national representative from either Ireland or France to pick up his Nobel Prize, sending his publisher instead […]"
Etymology
From refuse + -nik (suffix denoting a nickname for a person who endorses, exemplifies, or is associated with something, often a particular ideology or preference), a calque of Russian отка́зник (otkáznik), from отка́з (otkáz, “denial, refusal, rejection, repudiation”) + -ник (-nik, suffix forming masculine nouns, usually denoting adherents, etc.).
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ɹəˈfjuznɪk/
- British English: /ɹɪˈfjuːznɪk/