confute

present singular third person confutes · participle present confuting · participle past confuted · past confuted

1. archaictransitiveTo show (something or someone) to be false or wrong; to disprove or refute.

   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

   3 more examples

   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

   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