Grammar: ‘will’ for refusing
Intermediate to advanced level English (B1-C2)

Have you ever thought: ‘What’s wrong with my computer? It won’t work.’?

When you are frustrated about something not working, you can use ‘will’ usually in the form of won’t (will not). Here are some examples:

The heating won’t go on. We’ll have to call a heating engineer
Oh no. The car won’t start! Can we use yours?
The website won’t accept my card payment. What a pain in the neck!
The ladder won’t go high enough

This is almost like something refusing to do something. Here are some examples of dialogues of people refusing to do things and using ‘will’. Refusing like this is very strong so you use it very rarely but you might hear children using ‘won’t’ like this.

Frank, please can you stop shouting?
No, I won’t! I’m really angry and I want to shout.

Please open the door
I won’t open it

He won’t do as he is told
You need to be a little more patient. Give it some more time.

To talk about the past we can use ‘would’ instead of ‘will’ Eg

Do you know if Jenny will be at the meeting?
No, she said she wouldn’t be able to come.