confute
English
Etymology
From Middle French confuter, from Latin confūtāre.
Pronunciation
- (UK) IPA(key): /kənfjuːt/
Audio (Southern England) (file)
Verb
confute (third-person singular simple present confutes, present participle confuting, simple past and past participle confuted)
- (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.
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Derived terms
- confutable
- inconfutable
Translations
to disprove, refute
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