oppugn

From Middle French oppugner Latin oppugno (“fight against, to attack, assail, assault, storm, besiege, war with”).

• IPA^(key): /əˈpjuːn/

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• Rhymes: -uːn

oppugn (third-person singular simple present oppugns, present participle oppugning, simple past and past participle oppugned)

1. (transitive, rare) To contradict or controvert; to oppose; to challenge or question the truth or validity of a given statement.
   • 1662 (indicated as 1663), [Samuel Butler], “[The First Part of Hudibras]”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678; republished in A[lfred] R[ayney] Waller, editor, Hudibras: Written in the Time of the Late Wars, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, 1905, →OCLC:

     If nothing can oppugne love,
     And virtue invious ways can prove,
     What may not he confide to do
     That brings both love and virtue too?

   • 1761, Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, volume III, London: R. and J. Dodsley, page 180:

     It is for the same reason, that is, because 'tis all comprehended in Slawkenbergius, that I say nothing likewise of Scroderus (Andrea) who all the world knows, set himself to oppugn Prignitz with great violence, ---- proving it in his own way, first logically, and then by a series of stubborn facts

• impugn
• pugnacious
• repugnant

• pop gun, popgun