Misprove
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To disprove; to provide evidence that contradicts. archaic
"At this Giulio abode stupefied and well-nigh beside himself, acknowledging that Delio spoke the truth; nevertheless, impatient to rid himself of the annoy wherein he found himself, "I know very full well," quoth he, "that thou sayest sooth and that, if this wicked woman choose to be obstinate and persist in her lies, I can nowise misprove her by evidence and we shall be worse off than ever; but meseemeth Camillo should put far more trust in my most true words than in thelies of a woman of the vilest sort, whom he hath again and again proved to be a liar."
- 2 To provide an erroneous proof for.
"It is easy to ignore the difference between theory and law. It is easy to pull data out of context to misprove things. (They make it look like something is true when it is really false.)"
Example
More examples"At this Giulio abode stupefied and well-nigh beside himself, acknowledging that Delio spoke the truth; nevertheless, impatient to rid himself of the annoy wherein he found himself, "I know very full well," quoth he, "that thou sayest sooth and that, if this wicked woman choose to be obstinate and persist in her lies, I can nowise misprove her by evidence and we shall be worse off than ever; but meseemeth Camillo should put far more trust in my most true words than in thelies of a woman of the vilest sort, whom he hath again and again proved to be a liar."
Etymology
From mis- + prove.
More for "misprove"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.