confute
Americanverb (used with object)
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to prove to be false, invalid, or defective; disprove.
to confute an argument.
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to prove (a person) to be wrong by argument or proof.
to confute one's opponent.
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Obsolete. to bring to naught; confound.
verb
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to prove (a person or thing) wrong, invalid, or mistaken; disprove
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obsolete to put an end to
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of confute
1520–30; < Latin confūtāre to abash, silence, refute, equivalent to con- con- + -fūtāre; cf. refute
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Now comes the "mediator" trying to keep peace between many power centers and "the Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute."
From Time Magazine Archive
As head of the Government I wish once and for all to confute this miserable lie.
From Time Magazine Archive
Healthy, vigorous and solvent, they confute the view that old age, as William Butler Yeats put it, is nothing but a tattered coat upon a stick.
From Time Magazine Archive
Sometimes they illustrate his thesis; sometimes they confute it.
From Time Magazine Archive
And when he has found these principles, we hope he will either confute or embrace them.”
From Calvinistic Controversy Embracing a Sermon on Predestination and Election and Several Numbers, Formally Published in the Christian Advocate and Journal. by Fisk, Wilbur
Arguably, though, Stone and Kuznick's contention is less readily confuted.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 15, 2013
Those who expressed skepticism when the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. raised the dividend rate on its common stock to $9 were confuted by the Company's earnings for 1923.
From Time Magazine Archive
"False ideas can be confuted by argument, but it is only by true ideas they can be expelled."
From English Secularism A Confession Of Belief by Holyoake, George Jacob
“So it was; but you can't believe how sorry I felt not to know all the story, that I might have confuted her.”
From The Betrothed From the Italian of Alessandro Manzoni by Manzoni, Alessandro
Pelagians, The, xxiii, xxv, 128, 129, 130, 368; in Britain, 21, 32, 39; at the conference of St. Albans, 34, 35; their teachers confuted and expelled by Germanus, 40, 41.
From Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England by Bede, Cuthbert
Macmillan," he wrote, "seemed in his very person to embody the national decay he supposed himself to be confuting.
From Time Magazine Archive
The saint wrote him an answer full of apostolic spirit; in which, besides solidly confuting the Eutychian error, he added, that he was ready to lay down his life for the faith of the church.
From The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints January, February, March by Butler, Alban
It was partly to their success in confuting absurd doctrines that their confidence was due; though the confidence was excessive when it was transferred to the axioms from which they professed to start.
From The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) James Mill by Stephen, Leslie, Sir
Another apology for its length may also be offered:—its importance as confuting Schlegel's opinion, that the frequent mention of Genii is more consistent with Indian than with Arab notions.
From The Thousand and One Nights, Vol. I. Commonly Called the Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Anonymous
Stonor didn’t believe a word of this, but had no means of confuting the man on the spot.
From The Woman from Outside [on Swan River] by Footner, Hulbert
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
