The Frequency of the Verb Refuse
50 62.35. Compared to the verb reject, it in the same forms like refuse occurred
64 times 37.65 Leech, et al., 2001. Refuse had more 42 occurrences rather than reject.
Table 4.4 presented the frequencies of the lemmas refuse and reject. According to Table 4.4, the lemma refuse occurred 22 times and the lemma reject
occurred 15 times Leech, et al., 2001. The percentage of the lemma refuse was 59.45 and the lemma reject was 40.54. It meant that refuse was used more
than reject although the ratio was not really significant 18.91. The result in BNC showed that the verb refuse was used more than the verb reject.
The findings showed that the verb refuse was commonly used rather than the verb reject to express denial. There were some dictionaries which did not list
reject . Longman Dictionary of Common Errors did not have the verb reject in the
list. The explanation of the verb reject was in the verb refuse section. In that dictionary, the use of reject was compared to refuse. In Dictionary of Word
Origins , reject was not found in the list of words. In addition, there was an
explanation of refuse. In Google, the occurrences frequency of refuse was higher than reject, which the words refuse and reject could be a verb and a noun. The
word refuse occurred about 170.000.000 times in 0.19 second, while the word reject
occurred about 93.200.000 times in 0.20 second. As a result, the percentage of the word refuse in Google was 64.59 and the percentage of the word reject
was 35.41. The results showed that the word refuse as a verb and a noun had a higher occurrence than the word reject as a verb and a noun.
51 From the discussion, it could be concluded that the verb refuse had a higher
frequency than reject. As stated by Biber, et al. 2002, it would be known the most common words by investigating the frequency of words. The verb refuse
was commonly used to express denial rather than the verb reject.