Learn English – Euphemisms for rejection (man-women and vice versa)

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Example:

The more time passed, the more sure I became she’d […] me.

The most common word in this case is reject. I'm wondering, though, what euphemisms I can use aside from turn down?

Best Answer

You can say "She spurned me", though that's typically a very conscious, deliberate, and negative action.

From Collins, for example:

spurn: to reject (a person or thing) with contempt

So you would not be uncertain if the woman spurned you (she would make sure of that).

For a more passive rejection, one where she simply isn't reciprocating your affections, you can say "My love went unrequited".

From Collins again:

unrequited: (of love, affection, etc) not reciprocated or returned

Though you can see this phrase has the drawback about taking about your love as the object, rather than the woman or the relationship between the man and the woman.

Somewhere in the middle between passive and active rejection, in a way that talks about the relationship between the man and woman, is the construction:

The more time passed, the more sure I became she’d dismissed me.

The drawback to dismissed is that it is not specific to love or affection (though your readers would understand that's what it meant in this context, i.e. the elided clause [... as a lover] would be inescapably implied).

In regards to your "vice-versa", I'll caution you that turning the question around, and not-requiting a woman's love, is, to put it mildly, risky:

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned⁵

aka Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned

-- William Congreve's character Zara, in his play The Mourning Bride (Act III, Scene VIII).