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
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
Delighted at this really "safe" issue, the Deputies rose to support or confute Dr. Pinard.
From Time Magazine Archive
Adeline only laughed at these prejudices, without attempting to confute them; for she knew that Mrs Pemberton's appearance and manners would soon annihilate them.
From Adeline Mowbray or, The Mother and Daughter by Opie, Amelia Alderson
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
No. The story of stones being thrown at him is destitute of all proof but the guard's own assertion, and is confuted by a hundred eye witnesses.
From Recollections of Windsor Prison; Containing Sketches of its History and Discipline with Appropriate Strictures and Moral and Religious Reflection by Reynolds, John N.
And they have been often alleged to Flavian* himself, and never have been confuted, no not yet.
From Arguments Of Celsus, Porphyry, And The Emperor Julian, Against The Christians Also Extracts from Diodorus Siculus, Josephus, and Tacitus, Relating to the Jews, Together with an Appendix by Taylor, Thomas
This Memorial was confuted by another, and to the latter there was a Reply.
Macmillan," he wrote, "seemed in his very person to embody the national decay he supposed himself to be confuting.
From Time Magazine Archive
And gChrysostome sharply reproueth all such, and those who aduise with them vpon any occasion, confuting the reasons which they take to be sufficient warantise of their doings.
From A Treatise of Witchcraft by Roberts, Alexander
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 Field, Eugene
In some of his works Ghazzali gives special attention to confuting these.
From Mystics and Saints of Islam by Field, Claud
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 Bradlaugh, Charles
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.
