English

Verb

1. To establish the falsity of a claim or belief; to show or to tend to show that a theory or hypothesis is not valid.
   • 1943, Carl G. Hempel, "A Purely Syntactical Definition of Confirmation," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 8, no. 4, p. 122,

     The empirical data obtained in a test—or, as we shall prefer to say, the observation sentences describing those data—may then either confirm or disconfirm the given hypothesis, or they may be neutral with respect to it.

Related terms

• disconfirmation

References

• "disconfirm" in Encarta® World English Dictionary [North American Edition] © & (P)2007 Microsoft Corporation.
• Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989.