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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Confute \Con*fute\, verb (used with an object) [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.
I confute a good profession with a bad conversation. --Fuller.
Syn: To disprove; overthrow; sed aside; refute; oppugn.
Usage: 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.''
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
confute
verb: prove to be false; "The physicist disproved his colleagues' theories" [syn: {disprove}] [ant: {prove}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
71 Moby Thesaurus words for "confute": answer, answer conclusively, antagonize, argue down, be antipathetic, be inimical, beat against, break, clash, collide, conflict, conflict with, confound, contradict, contrapose, contravene, controvert, counter, counteract, counterattack, countercharge, counterclaim, counterpose, countervail, counterwork, cross, crush, defeat, demolish, deny, disconfirm, dismiss, dispose of, evert, finish, floor, go against, go counter to, interfere with, lock horns, make a rebuttal, meet head-on, militate against, nonplus, oppose, oppugn, overthrow, overturn, overwhelm, parry, put to silence, rebut, reduce to silence, refute, rejoin, resist, run against, run counter to, settle, shut up, silence, smash all opposition, squash, squelch, subvert, surrebut, surrejoin, swim upstream, undermine, upset, work against
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