confuter

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con·fute

(kən-fyo͞ot′)

tr.v. con·fut·ed, con·fut·ing, con·futes

1. To prove to be wrong or in error; refute decisively.

2. Obsolete To confound.

[Latin cōnfūtāre; see bhau- in Indo-European roots.]

con·fut′a·ble adj.

con·fu′ta·tive (kən-fyo͞o′tə-tĭv) adj.

con·fut′er n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Noun

confuter - a debater who refutes or disproves by offering contrary evidence or argument

disprover, rebutter, refuter

arguer, debater - someone who engages in debate

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Such moral, religious and aesthetic criticism commits Milton himself to an exemplary style at all times, to a broad notion of "decorum." But particular passages are sometimes explicitly intended as counterstatement, as with the attack on the self-styled "modest" Confuter's manner of praising Parliament in An Apology, YP 1:920, immediately followed by Milton's own panegyric "because it shall not be said I am apter to blame others than to make triall my self" (922).