From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Confute \Con*fute\, v. 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.
[1913 Webster]
Satan stood . . . confuted and convinced
Of his weak arguing fallacious drift. --Milton.
[1913 Webster]
No man's error can be confuted who doth not . . . grant
some true principle that contradicts his error.
--Chillingworth.
[1913 Webster]
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."
[1913 Webster]
From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
confute
v 1: prove to be false; "The physicist disproved his colleagues'
theories" [syn: disprove, confute] [ant: demonstrate,
establish, prove, shew, show]