Word.ws English Dictionary

self-refute

self-refute verb: (of an idea or theory) To prove itself false by showing that falsehood is a logical consequence of the act or situation of holding it to be true.

Verb

self-refute (third-person singular simple present self-refutes, present participle self-refuting, simple past and past participle self-refuted)

  1. (intransitive) (of an idea or theory) To prove itself false by showing that falsehood is a logical consequence of the act or situation of holding it to be true.
    • Moreover it is philosophical suicide, since it self-refutes.2008, Graham Dunstan Martin, Living on Purpose: Meaning, Intention, and Value

Forms of self-refute

third-person singular presentself-refutes
present participleself-refuting
past participleself-refuted
pastself-refuted

Origin of self-refute

From self- + refute.

Words formed from self-refute

Questions about self-refute

What does self-refute mean?
Self-refute means (of an idea or theory) To prove itself false by showing that falsehood is a logical consequence of the act or situation of holding it to be true.
What part of speech is self-refute?
Self-refute is a verb.
What is the past tense of self-refute?
The past tense of self-refute is self-refuted.

Words near self-refute in the dictionary

  1. self-reflects
  2. self-reflexive
  3. self-reflexivity
  4. self-refutation
  5. self-refutations
  6. self-refute
  7. self-refuted
  8. self-refutes
  9. self-refuting
  10. self-regard
  11. self-regarding

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: self-refute (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.

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Cite this entry: “self-refute.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/self-refute. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.