confute
Americanverb (used with object)
-
to prove to be false, invalid, or defective; disprove.
to confute an argument.
-
to prove (a person) to be wrong by argument or proof.
to confute one's opponent.
-
Obsolete. to bring to naught; confound.
verb
-
to prove (a person or thing) wrong, invalid, or mistaken; disprove
-
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:
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
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
Now comes the "mediator" trying to keep peace between many power centers and "the Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute."
From Time Magazine Archive
I should consider it an unpardonable waste of time to devote any considerable space to this rubbish, either in order merely to quote opinions or to investigate and confute them.
From Morals and the Evolution of Man by Max Simon Nordau
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
I often confuted his notions: often in our disputations I pushed a good argument so home, that all his subtilty was not able to elude its force.
From Letters of Abelard and Heloise To which is prefix?d a particular account of their lives, amours, and misfortunes by Pierre Bayle
“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 Alessandro Manzoni
She was very bright and convincing as she told of this prominent man met and subdued, that leading antagonist confuted, and how the Bishops were coming in.
From Marriage by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
Macmillan," he wrote, "seemed in his very person to embody the national decay he supposed himself to be confuting.
From Time Magazine Archive
In some of his works Ghazzali gives special attention to confuting these.
From Mystics and Saints of Islam by Claud Field
I had infinite satisfaction in hearing solid truth confuting vain subtilty.
From James Boswell Famous Scots Series by W. Keith (William Keith) Leask
Against it, and completely confuting it, we set the clear conclusions of Dr. Brinkley, backed by his unequalled record of over 600 successful transplants of goat-glands into men and women, during the past three years.
From The Goat-gland Transplantation As Originated and Successfully Performed by J. R. Brinkley, M. D., of Milford, Kansas, U. S. A., in Over 600 Operations Upon Men and Women by Sydney Blanshard Flower
Divers of them held the opinion that the Cartesians, in confuting the anonymous philosopher, had conceded too much to philosophy.
From Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil by E.M. Huggard
Random Word
Spin the wheel and learn a new word!
Get a wordDefinitions 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.
