Word of the Day Archive
Thursday August 8, 2002
confute \kuhn-FYOOT\
, transitive verb:
To overwhelm by argument; to refute conclusively; to prove or show to be false.
Having settled in Rome in 1486, he proposed 900 theses and challenged any scholar to confute them, agreeing to pay his expenses.
-- David S. Katz and Richard H. Popkin, Messianic Revolution
Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes.
-- Bertrand Russell
As he says, a professor of geography does not feel obliged regularly to confute those who believe that the earth is flat.
-- Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "Bearing False Witness", New York Times, May 13, 2001
Its organizer is the Rev. Geoffrey Wilson, who wants to confute the Darwinist heretics by proving that the island is the location of the Garden of Eden.
-- Adam Hochschild, "The Floating Swap Meet", New York Times, May 28, 2000
Confute is from Latin confutare, "to check the boiling of a liquid; to put down; to silence."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for confute
