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:
As head of the Government I wish once and for all to confute this miserable lie.
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
Delighted at this really "safe" issue, the Deputies rose to support or confute Dr. Pinard.
From Time Magazine Archive
Sometimes they illustrate his thesis; sometimes they confute it.
From Time Magazine Archive
He was on intimate terms with them, and fond of using them to confute the pretensions of modern learning.
From Froth by Armando Palacio Vald?s
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
Well, I do compose then—so you are confuted!
From Letters of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy from Italy and Switzerland by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
And his cousin being thus confuted, Manasseh had not much further difficulty in wheedling two pounds ten out of him.
From The King of Schnorrers Grotesques and Fantasies by Israel Zangwill
These things therefore we have adduced to you from your own writings, than which we have employed no other testimony, for you yourselves are by them confuted.
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 Thomas Taylor
Macmillan," he wrote, "seemed in his very person to embody the national decay he supposed himself to be confuting.
From Time Magazine Archive
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
Speaking, reasoning, acting, like the rest of the world, on the implied truthfulness of the faculties whose falsity he affirms, he will save you the trouble of confuting him, by confuting himself.
From The Eclipse of Faith Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic by Henry Rogers
Christianity in later years did not triumph by confuting the objections raised against it on the part of culture.
From Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing Onward; Until the Day Dawn by George Tybout Purves
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
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