The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Refusal \Re*fus"al\ (-al), n.
   1. The act of refusing; denial of anything demanded,
      solicited, or offered for acceptance.
      [1913 Webster]

            Do they not seek occasion of new quarrels,
            On my refusal, to distress me more?   --Milton.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. The right of taking in preference to others; the choice of
      taking or refusing; option; as, to give one the refusal of
      a farm; to have the refusal of an employment.
      [1913 Webster]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

refusal
    n 1: the act of refusing
    2: a message refusing to accept something that is offered

Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:

149 Moby Thesaurus words for "refusal":
   Eighteenth Amendment, Prohibition Party, Volstead Act, abjuration,
   abjurement, antipathy, averseness, aversion, backwardness, ban,
   brush-off, bucking, challenge, choice, chucking, chucking out,
   cold shoulder, contempt, contention, contraband, contradiction,
   contraposition, contravention, contraversion, counteraction,
   counterworking, crosscurrent, crossing, cursoriness, cut,
   declination, declining, denial, despisal, despising, disagreement,
   disallowance, disapproval, discard, disclamation, discounting,
   disinclination, dismissal, disobedience, disownment, disposal,
   disregard, disrelish, dissent, distaste, embargo, emption,
   exception, exclusion, first option, first refusal, foot-dragging,
   forbiddance, forbidden fruit, forbidding, fractiousness,
   grudging consent, grudgingness, head wind, ignoring, impugnation,
   impugnment, index, index expurgatorius,
   index librorum prohibitorum, indisposedness, indisposition,
   indocility, inhibition, injunction, interdict, interdiction,
   interdictum, intractableness, lack of enthusiasm, lack of zeal,
   law, mutinousness, negation, no-no, nolition, nonacceptance,
   nonapproval, nonconsideration, obstinacy, opposing, opposition,
   opposure, oppugnation, option, passing by, perfunctoriness,
   preclusion, preemption, prevention, privilege, prohibition,
   prohibitory injunction, proscription, putting away, putting out,
   rebuff, rebutment, rebuttal, recalcitrance, recalcitrancy,
   recantation, refractoriness, rejection, reluctance, renitence,
   renitency, renouncement, repression, repudiation, repugnance,
   repulse, resistance, restrictive covenants, right of emption,
   right of preemption, ruling out, scouting, slowness, snub,
   spurning, standing against, statute, stubbornness, sulk, sulkiness,
   sulks, sullenness, sumptuary laws, suppression, taboo,
   throwing out, traversal, turning out, undercurrent, unenthusiasm,
   unwillingness, zoning, zoning laws



Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856):

REFUSAL. The act of declining to receive or to do something.
     2. A grantee may refuse a title, vide Assent; one appointed executor
may refuse to act as such. la some cases, a neglect to perform a duty which
the party is required by law or his agreement to do, will amount to a
refusal.



The Devil's Dictionary (1881-1906):

REFUSAL, n.  Denial of something desired; as an elderly maiden's hand
in marriage, to a rich and handsome suitor; a valuable franchise to a
rich corporation, by an alderman; absolution to an impenitent king, by
a priest, and so forth.  Refusals are graded in a descending scale of
finality thus:  the refusal absolute, the refusal condition, the
refusal tentative and the refusal feminine.  The last is called by
some casuists the refusal assentive.