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
Delighted at this really "safe" issue, the Deputies rose to support or confute Dr. Pinard.
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
He says it is compounded of look and glass; but, if the reader happens to think it is derived from looking and glass, the Doctor cannot confute him.
From Deformities of Samuel Johnson, Selected from his Works by Anonymous
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
The evidence against her was too strong to be confuted, and she pleaded guilty.
From Witch, Warlock, and Magician Historical Sketches of Magic and Witchcraft in England and Scotland by W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport) Adams
Her happy assurance, her absolute confidence that his desires would march with hers, reproached and confuted every adverse thought in him as though it was a treachery to love.
From Marriage by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
The opponents of Government ownership and management have been ruthlessly confuted.
From The Express Companies of the United States A Study of a Public Utility by Bert Benedict
Macmillan," he wrote, "seemed in his very person to embody the national decay he supposed himself to be confuting.
From Time Magazine Archive
Still I determined to watch and note events with a view to confuting the superstition which foresaw good luck in the presence of this cat and her offspring.
From The House An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice by Eugene Field
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 Sir Leslie Stephen
Petrarch had himself formed the design of confuting the doctrines of Averroes; but he engaged Ludovico Marsili, an Augustine monk of Florence, to perform the task.
From The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch by Thomas Campbell
But to have an illustration, and a very base illustration, drawn from his own daughters in his own presence, made with the object of confuting himself,—this was more than the Marquis could endure.
From The Vicar of Bullhampton by Anthony Trollope
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.
