confute

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English

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Etymology

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From Middle French confuter, from Latin confūtāre.

Pronunciation

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Verb

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confute (third-person singular simple present confutes, present participle confuting, simple past and past participle confuted)

  1. (transitive, now rare) To show (something or someone) to be false or wrong; to disprove or refute.
    • 1593, Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence:
      Procatalepsis is a forme of speech by which the Orator perceiving aforehand what might be objected against him, and hurt him, doth confute it before it be spoken [] .
    • 1644, John Milton, Areopagitica:
      bad books [...] to a discreet and judicious Reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate.
    • 1767, David Cranz, A History of Greenland:
      The conjecture of [Greenland] jointing on the east with Spitzberg, Nova-zembla, and Tartary, is pretty well, if not entirely, confuted by the new discoveries of the Dutch and Russians.

Derived terms

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Translations

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