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Rebut   Listen
verb
Rebut  v. t.  (past & past part. rebutted; pres. part. rebutting)  
1.
To drive or beat back; to repulse. "Who him, rencount'ring fierce, as hawk in flight, Perforce rebutted back."
2.
(Law) To contradict, meet, or oppose by argument, plea, or countervailing proof.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rebut" Quotes from Famous Books



... contradiction, and having not the least evidence to rebut it, the Turk was obliged to withdraw from the royal presence discomfited, while the Armenian doctor retired to his own dwelling, comforting himself, in the first place, if he had uttered a falsehood it was in a good ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray

... colonels avowed that such an objection would never have entered their heads; now that it had been suggested, however, they could not see what to rebut it with. Neither of them would have been able to enlist Fougas as a private soldier, despite his ability, his physical strength and his appearance of ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... grand ruins of a feudal land, I still think my colleague's question by no means devoid of rel'vancy. The last charge against the accused was one of burglary; the next charge on the paper is of bigamy and desertion. It does without question appear that the defence, in aspiring to rebut this last charge, have really admitted the next. Either Innocent Smith is still under a charge of attempted burglary, or else that is exploded; but he is pretty well fixed for attempted bigamy. It all depends on what view we take of the alleged letter from Curate ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... to rebut a possible objection which occurred to him—"Can you, Demosthenes, whose policy ended in defeat, swear by a victory?"—the orator proceeds to measure his language, choosing his very words so as to give no handle to opponents, thus showing us that even in our most inspired moments reason ought ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus

... having no countenance from other journals, was treated as a whim, a paradox, a bold extravagance, of the Blackwood critics. Mr. Wordsworth's neighbors in Westmoreland, who had (generally speaking) a profound contempt for him, used to rebut the testimony of Blackwood by one constant reply—"Ay, Blackwood praises Wordsworth, but who else praises him?" In short, up to 1820, the name of Wordsworth was trampled under foot; from 1820 to 1830, it was militant; from 1830 to 1835, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... moorland, heather and furze. There were sheep, and donkeys and goats on it, and a melancholy old kennel-horse or two, all feeding peacefully. Amazon could not be accused in connection with them, so Christian reflected, and prepared herself to rebut any such slander. The rain was lighter, and the soaking mist that had all day filled the valley, was slowly thinning, and revealing the mighty scroll of silver that was the river, while the woods and hillsides ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... and towards ride: Soone meete they both, both fell and furious, 130 That daunted with their forces hideous, Their steeds do stagger, and amazed stand, And eke themselves, too rudely rigorous, Astonied with the stroke of their owne hand Doe backe rebut, and each to other yeeldeth ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser

... of fear—of a tame and cowardly spirit. I may rebut that imputation without vanity, by referring to the siege of Ctesiphon and the reduction of Egypt. The generous Zabdas will do me justice—nay, you all will—why am I apprehensive? Bear with me a moment more'—'Say on, say on, noble Otho,' said the Queen, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... of the last cardinal of Medici, died at Venice. (The father of the children was a French running footman.-D.) [Cosmo the Third was sixty-seven years old at the period of the marriage: "une fois le marriage conclu," says the Biog. Univ. "El'eonore refusa de la consommer, rebut'ee par la figure, par l'age et surtout par les d'esordres de son 'epouse." Cosmo died at the age of eighty-one. A translation of his Travels through England, in ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... much space is being given to a reprobate and often dull author; but something has been said already to rebut the complaint, and something more may be added now and again. French literature, from the death of Chenier to the appearance of Lamartine, has generally been held to contain hardly more than two names—those of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... Oswald Louvaine of Newcastle, a young man who asserted himself to be the grandson of the long-deceased Hugh. His documentary proofs were all in order, his witnesses were numerous and positive, and Lady Louvaine possessed no counter-proof of any kind to rebut this unheard-of claim. After a vain search among her husband's papers, and a consultation with such of her friends and relatives as she judged suitable, she decided not to carry the matter into a court of law, but to yield peaceable ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... is inflamed can function properly? Such questions are absurd, I acknowledge. Questions that carry foregone conclusions on the face of them write the questioner down an ass, which I also acknowledge. But I desire to rebut the inference these questions reflect on me by making a few requests which show that there is a lot of professional reasoning based on that sort of logic which justifies my childish, ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... experienced men of the world. You cannot but have perceived that such things are constantly happening in real life, that they are of daily occurrence. I am almost ashamed to stand up before you and endeavour to rebut a story so plausible and so essentially convincing. I feel that my task is well-nigh hopeless. Nevertheless, I must do ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... still sceptical of it. And in face of these doubts the three or four dons who had been down at the river were now half ready to believe that there must, after all, be some mistake, and that in this world of illusions they had to-night been specially tricked. To rebut this theory, there was the notable absence of undergraduates. Or was this an illusion, too? Men of thought, agile on the plane of ideas, devils of fellows among books, they groped feebly in this matter of actual life and death. The sight of their Warden heartened them. After all, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... repeated, with a sort of pathetic emphasis, as if eager to persuade himself that she had condescended to rebut his accusation. "Y' ain't been like ye used to at all. Appears like as if ye thought us folks in the Settlement wasn't good enough fer ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... think baseness possible to him when it was confessed by his own mouth once. She heard black names cast at him and the whole of the great Mel's brood, and incapable of quite disbelieving them merited, unable to challenge and rebut them, she dropped into her recent state of self-contempt: into her lately-instilled doubt whether it really was in Nature's power, unaided by family-portraits, coats-of-arms, ball-room practice, and at least one small phial of Essence of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... two cousins began sharply to differ. On 3rd November, during the debates on the Peace, Pitt rose to rebut the censures of Thomas Grenville on a policy which implied the surrender of the Mediterranean to France. He deprecated these sweeping criticisms; for he had ever been ready to frame a treaty which, though falling short of our just ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... slaves. On returning home, I had another posse of visitors, and some of Haj Ahmed's sons, who came with the fixed determination to convert me. One said, on my admiring his Soudan coloured frock, "If you will become a Mussulman, I will give you one." I now felt myself obliged to rebut some of this impertinence, and answered, "If you would give me all the frocks of Soudan I would not change my religion." I then addressed them sharply against wishing to alter the decrees of God, turning the dogmas of their religion upon ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... negro of the African race was regarded as an article of property." This may or it may not have been true of a majority in those days. True or not, it refers only to the opinions of individual colonists; and these cannot be received as a basis of construction for the words, nor can they rebut the plain intent, of a constitutional provision. It is not what individual colonists believed, but what the framers of the Constitution incorporated in that instrument, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... forms of his name, from "Wollesley" to "Walsey." When she wrote to me of the pleasure she had had in meeting "the Abbot Guaschet," it took me a moment to recognise the author of English Monastic Life. She would laugh herself at her spelling, and would rebut any one who teased her about it by saying, "Oh! What does it matter? I don't pretend to be a bright specimen—like you!" When she made arrangements to come to see me at the House of Lords, which she frequently did, she always wrote it "the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... it struggled as hard as Partridge the Almanac-maker to rebut that fatal accusation; complained (Teutschmeister and German-Papist part of it) loudly at the Diets; got Albert and his consorts put to the Ban (GEACHTET), fiercely menaced by the Kaiser Karl V. But nothing came of all that; nothing but noise. Albert ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... and cannot be disputed. And, therefore, gentlemen, your common-sense will agree with me when I say that it is a lawful presumption—a presumption which the law warrants you in drawing and in holding till you have some satisfactory evidence to rebut it—that the person who obtains access to a house or any other building secured by a lock of this description must have in his or her possession a key which is capable of opening ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward

... and struck on a small hand-bell. Promptly on the summons Sergeant Archelaus appeared in the doorway; so promptly, indeed, that he might have found it hard, under cross-examination, to rebut the charge of having ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... answered the argument adduced by Simmias, goes on to rebut that of Cebes,[21] who objected that the soul might in time wear out. In order to do this, he relates that, when a young man, he attempted to investigate the causes of all things, why they exist and why they perish; and in the course of his researches, ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato

... and religious phenomena in man not only depends on some external influences and culture, but perpetually varies with them, what would such a revelation be but a provision in analogy with these facts? But it is sufficient to rebut this gratuitous dictum, of an external revelation of "spiritual and moral truth being impossible," that some external influence is necessary for any development of the religious faculty at all. If the ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... for women suffrage, because he said that he favored the vote for white women only and that the bill in its present form would not be allowed in his state—I must confess that this action almost took away all of my hopes especially after there was no one to rise and rebut his argument. There was no one in the United States Senate to speak for democracy for all the people. Now I think that just such spirit as this exhibited by that great Senator from Mississippi is at the foundation of this world's war ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards

... said Willis; "supposing your friend, an honourable man, is accused of theft, and appearances are against him, would you at once admit the charge? It would be a fair trial of your faith in him; and if he were able in the event satisfactorily to rebut it, I don't think he would thank you, should you have waited for his explanation before you took his part, instead of knowing him too well to suspect it. If, then, I come to the Church with faith in her, whatever I see ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... sacred books of the Old and New Testament; without pretending, however, that it is not allowable to explain them, and reduce them to a natural and likely sense, by retrenching what is too marvelous about them, which might rebut enlightened persons. I think on that point I may apply the principle of St. Paul;[1] "the letter killeth, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... the antiquity of creation, and in particular of the present kinds of the earths inhabitants, or of a large part of them, comes in to rebut the objection that there has not been time enough for any marked diversification of living things through divergent variation—not time enough for varieties to have diverged into ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... As you believe him to be a man of honor, what right have you to doubt his honor in this instance? Who is his accuser? An anonymous scoundrel who has brought no specific charge against him. If there were any such, wouldn't the girl's parents have come forward? He is not called upon to rebut, nor you to entertain an anonymous accusation; and as for believing him guilty because a girl of that rank happened to be in his rooms acting as nurse to him, begad you might as well insist upon his marrying that dem'd old Irish gin-drinking ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... B, with a receipt, as a hint that the transaction is intended to be for ready money, and B detain the receipt without paying the cash, A will be at liberty to prove the circumstances and to recover his claim. The evidence to rebut the receipt must, however, be clear and indubitable, as, after all, written evidence is of a stronger nature than ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... Louis—had the sense of being awakened to events of formidable grandeur whose imminence neither had suspected. Still assuring himself that his position was absolutely safe, Louis nevertheless was aware of a sinking in the stomach. He could rebut any accusation. "And yet ...!" murmured his craven conscience. What could be the enigma between Mrs. Maldon and Rachel? He was now trying to convince himself that Mrs. Maldon had in fact divided the money into two parts, ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... and on the 9th an adjournment took place to the 3rd of October, in consequence of an application from her majesty's counsel. On that day Mr. Brougham entered on the defence in a speech of great power; and he was followed by Mr. Williams, who declared that he should be able to rebut many of the prominent points sworn to in the prosecution by the clearest testimony. The examination of the witnesses for the defence lasted from the 5th of October to the 24th, and Mr. Denman proceeded to sum up the evidence. At the conclusion of his speech he remarked:—"We ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... persons who swore positively that they were present at the marriage, one of them being the woman who is said to have been married. That is direct evidence. With all our search, we have hitherto found no one to give us any direct evidence to rebut this. Then they brought forward, to corroborate these statements, a certain amount of circumstantial evidence,—and ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... be seen from the details, the fate of the Boer prisoners of war was not such a bad one after all. Nor, either, was life in the Concentration Camps, and I have endeavoured to throw some new light on the subject to rebut the old false rumours which, lately, the German Government revived when taxed with harsh treatment of their own prisoners of war, so as to draw comparisons advantageously ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill

... he might with justice bring against others. For his ears are unused and strange to ill report, and he is so accustomed to hear himself praised that insult is more than he can bear. If, however, I seem to be anxious to rebut charges which are merely frivolous and foolish, the blame must be laid at the door of those, to whom such accusations, in spite of their triviality, can only bring disgrace. I am not to blame. Ridiculous as these charges may be, their refutation ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... Gladstone and Tribe, found a possible cause in the formation of a film of peroxide on the spongy lead. E. J. Wade has suggested a sudden readjustment of the spongy mass into a complex sulphate. To rebut these hypotheses it is only necessary to say that the fall can be deferred for a long time by pressing fresh acid into the pores hydrostatically (see Liebenow, Zeits. fur Elektrochem., 1897, iv. 61), or by working ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the slave were done before I joined his cause. In thus referring to them, do not suppose me merely seeking occasion of eulogy on my predecessors and present co-laborers. I recall these things only to rebut the contemptuous criticism which some about us make the excuse for their past neglect of the movement, and in answer to "Ion's" representation of our course as reckless fanaticism, childish impatience, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... and genuinely annoyed, had retorted upon him quite curtly, and had remembered what many persons had said about Mr. Enwright's wrong-headed jealous sensitiveness—animadversions which he, as a worshipper of Mr. Enwright, had been accustomed to rebut. Further, Lucas himself had not erred by the extravagance of his enthusiasm for George's earth-shaking success. For example, Lucas had said: "Don't go and get above yourself, old chap. They may decide not to build it after all. You never ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... n't expatiate on it," said Rowland. "All I wished to do was to rebut your charge that I am ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James



Words linked to "Rebut" :   rebutter, disprove, repudiate, contradict, disown, rebuttal, controvert



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