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Webster 1913 Edition

Confute

Con-fute

,
Verb.
T.
[
imp. & p. p.
Confuted
;
p. pr. & vb. n.
Confuting
.]
[L.
confutare
to chek (a boiling liquid), to repress, confute;
con-
+ a root seen in
futis
a water vessel), prob. akin to
fundere
to pour: cf. F.
confuter
. See
Fuse
to melt.]
To overwhelm by argument; to refute conclusively; to prove or show to be false or defective; to overcome; to silence.
Satan stood . . .
confuted
and convinced
Of his weak arguing fallacious drift.
Milton.
No man’s error can be
confuted
who doth not . . . grant some true principle that contradicts his error.
Chillingworth.
Syn. – To disprove; overthrow; sed aside; refute; oppugn.
–
To
Confute
,
Refute.
Refute is literally to and decisive evidence; as, to refute a calumny, charge, etc. Confute is literally to check boiling, as when cold water is poured into hot, thus serving to allay, bring down, or neutralize completely. Hence, as applied to arguments (and the word is never applied, like refute, to charges), it denotes, to overwhelm by evidence which puts an end to the case and leaves an opponent nothing to say; to silence; as, “the atheist is confuted by the whole structure of things around him.”

Webster 1828 Edition

Confute

CONFUTE

,
Verb.
T.
[L.]
1.
To disprove; to prove to be false, defective or invaled; to overthrow; as, to confute arguments, reasoning, theory, error.
2.
To prove to be wrong; to convict of error, by argument or proof; as, to confute an advocate at the bar; to confute a writer.

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