Kavekk wrote:
Using 'refute' to mean 'deny' is a fairly common mistake...
It's a common use of the word and it appears in the dictionary. So I'm unsure what your issue is here. I used the word, right? How about you let me set the meaning of the word as I meant it when I wrote it instead of insisting that my own words are not what I meant to write because there's another more restrictive meaning that the word could have?
If you want to argue that refute isn't the best or most accurate word to use, then that's fine. I'm just unsure what you think you're getting out of taking a sentence where I clearly used the word "refute" to mean "argue against", and in which that use of the word makes perfect sense, and then insisting on using the meaning that doesn't make sense and declaring my statement to be incorrect. Dunno but that just seems like your creating a conflict for no reason at all.