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
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
As head of the Government I wish once and for all to confute this miserable lie.
From Time Magazine Archive
There they stand for ever to confute injustice, to rectify error, to defy malice; to silence, and long outlive the sneer, the lie, the jest, the reproach.
From Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad with Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected Vol. III (of 3) by Mrs. (Anna) Jameson
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
Well, I do compose then—so you are confuted!
From Letters of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy from Italy and Switzerland by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
Macmillan," he wrote, "seemed in his very person to embody the national decay he supposed himself to be confuting.
From Time Magazine Archive
The urgency of confuting heretics made it necessary to find new words to express the ancient faith about God.
From Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) From the Complete American Edition by Saint Thomas Aquinas
However, it gave him so high an opinion of my abilities in the confuting way that he seriously proposed my being his colleague in a project he had of setting up a new sect.
From Franklin's Autobiography (Eclectic English Classics) by Benjamin Franklin
It was possible, however, to find evidence supporting or confuting his story.
From Arthur Mervyn Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 by Charles Brockden Brown
The Abbe Lodivicat says, "His library was curious and valuable; always open to the learned, even to his opponents, whom he furnished with pleasure, both with books and arguments, which were employed in confuting him."
From Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With The Freethinkers." by Charles Bradlaugh
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