CONFUTE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does confute mean? 

• CONFUTE (verb)
  The verb CONFUTE has 1 sense:

1. prove to be false

  Familiarity information: CONFUTE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CONFUTE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they confute    ... he / she / it confutes   
Past simple: confuted   
Past participle: confuted   
-ing form: confuting   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Prove to be false

Classified under:

Verbs of thinking, judging, analyzing, doubting

Synonyms:

confute; disprove

Context example:

The physicist disproved his colleagues' theories

Hypernyms (to "confute" is one way to...):

contradict; negate (prove negative; show to be false)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "confute"):

explode (show (a theory or claim) to be baseless, or refute and make obsolete)

controvert; rebut; refute (prove to be false or incorrect)

falsify (prove false)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something
Somebody ----s that CLAUSE

Derivation:

confutation (evidence that refutes conclusively)

confutation (the speech act of refuting conclusively)

confutative (able to be refuted)

confuter (a debater who refutes or disproves by offering contrary evidence or argument)

 Context examples 

Even Challenger was affected by the consideration that his enemies would never stand confuted if the confirmation of his statements should never reach those who had doubted them.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

If I have not said much about it before, it was, of course, that the Professor's earnest desire was that no possible rumor of the unanswerable argument which we carried should be allowed to leak out until the moment came when his enemies were to be confuted.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)