Monday, May 22, 2006

 
I just heard an announcer on the BBC (carried on my local public radio station, KQED) using the word "refute" to mean "argue against". This seems wrong to me; I always used it to mean "argue against successfully; prove wrong". I checked my old American Heritage Dictionary, and my wife Beth's Webster's Encyclopedic, and they both support my position. (Meaning, neither refutes me.) Or is this a British thing? Yes, maybe: my Chambers Dictionary, published by Chambers Harrap in London (though my edition, which, like many of my possessions, I found on the street, was published by license in India) gives the meaning as "to deny", though a "refutation" is "that which disproves." Hmmm. Any input from my readers, on either side of the Atlantic?

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