means The act of proving a statement, argument, or accusation to be false or wrong, usually by presenting counter-evidence or reasoning.

from From Latin refutare, 'to drive back, repel, rebut' — built from re- ('back') and a root futare meaning 'to beat' or 'to strike.' That same striking root surfaces in confutare (to confute, to silence by argument), so to refute is quite literally to beat an argument back into its corner. It entered English through the courtroom-and-rhetoric vocabulary of the 1500s, where winning meant landing the harder verbal blow.