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
And I must confess that I have not been able to confute this statement.
From Empires and Emperors of Russia, China, Korea, and Japan Notes and Recollections by Monsignor Count Vay de Vaya and Luskod by P?ter Vay
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
Seeing him dumbfoundered, the other concluded him confuted, and withdrew calmed.
From The Cloister and the Hearth A Tale of the Middle Ages by Charles Reade
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 Cuthbert Bede
In that, I have confuted singly his proofs, or rather suspicions, resulting from the prosecution, to which his Honour attaches himself.
From The Old Yellow Book Source of Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book by Anonymous
Macmillan," he wrote, "seemed in his very person to embody the national decay he supposed himself to be confuting.
From Time Magazine Archive
Cowden Clarke confirms Hunt in stating that Keats’s hair was brown, and he assigns the same colour, or dark hazel, to his eyes: confuting the “auburn” and “blue” of which Mrs. Procter had spoken.
From Life of John Keats by William Michael Rossetti
As for Dr Downame's1036 two glosses upon that place, which he borroweth from Bellarmine, and whereby he thinketh to elude our argument, we thank Dr Forbesse1037 for confuting them.
From The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) by George Gillespie
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
In it, besides confuting the conclusions of the other commissioners on the matters affecting his administration of the post office, Stayner discussed a number of questions, in which he differed in opinion from his colleagues.
From The History of the Post Office in British North America by Sir William Smith
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