confute
/kənˈfjuːt/
confute verb: to show (something or someone) to be false or wrong; to disprove or refute.
Verb
confute (third-person singular simple present confutes, present participle confuting, simple past and past participle confuted)
- To show (something or someone) to be false or wrong; to disprove or refute.
- 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 […].1593, Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence
- bad books [...] to a discreet and judicious Reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate.1644, John Milton, Areopagitica
confute meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada
confute in Tamil
- தவறென நிரூபி, மெய்ப்பி
confute in Urdu
- انکار کرنا, تردید کرنا
confute in Malayalam
- contradict, disprove, controvert
- ഖണ്ഡിക്കുക, പാടെ നിരാകരിക്കുക, അടിസ്ഥാനരഹിതമെന്നു സ്ഥാപിക്കുക, തെറ്റെന്നു സ്ഥാപിക്കുക, തെറ്റെന്നു തെളിയിക്കുക, എതിർക്കുക
confute in Kannada
- ಅಲ್ಲಗಳೆ, ತಪ್ಪುಹಚ್ಚು, ತಪ್ಪಿತಸ್ಥನೆಂದು ತೋರಿಸು, ಖಂಡಿಸು
Examples of confute in a sentence
- 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.1767, David Cranz, A History of Greenland:
- We can look up something in a book and learn it perfectly well with no other motive than to confute reinforcement theory, or out of boredom, or idle curiosity.1959, Noam Chomsky, Review of Verbal behavior, in Language, volume 35, number 1, page 41:
Forms of confute
| third-person singular present | confutes |
|---|---|
| present participle | confuting |
| past participle | confuted |
| past | confuted |
Origin of confute
From Middle French confuter, from Latin confūtō.
Words formed from confute
Words that rhyme with confute
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- cute
- moot
- overshoot
- recruit
- salute
- volute
- dispute
- impute
- pollute
- scoot
- snoot
- substitute
- chute
- depute
- dilute
- hoot
- loot
- pursuit
- reboot
- scute
- uproot
- Beirut
- cahoot
- Clute
- convolute
- lute
- zoot
- ablute
- Aleut
- argute
- astute
- beaut
- bruit
- compute
- coot
- doot
- en route
- glout
- jute
- minute
- newt
- poot
- refute
- repute
- resolute
- 'tute
- angel lute
- butte
Questions about confute
- What does confute mean?
- Confute means to show (something or someone) to be false or wrong; to disprove or refute.
- What is confute in Tamil?
- Confute in Tamil is தவறென நிரூபி, மெய்ப்பி. See Confute meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use confute in a sentence?
- 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.
- What part of speech is confute?
- Confute is a verb.
- How do you pronounce confute?
- Confute is pronounced /kənˈfjuːt/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of confute?
- The past tense of confute is confuted.
Words near confute in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: confute (page history and authors); confute (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); confute (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); confute (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); confute (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-confute.wav.
Cite this entry: “confute.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/confute. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.