unsubstantiate

unsubstantiateverb

• 1

  To prove false; to disprove or discredit.

  • With this evidence, in addition to the findings of previous research, showing conclusively that it is not the pattern of courses followed by the student in the high school but his scholastic aptitude which determines his success in the college program, only one additional type of evidence is needed to completely unsubstantiate the reverence of colleges for entrance prescriptions.
  • Confirming rules substantiate or unsubstantiate the presumption diagnosis and therefore are not unavoidable.
• 2

  To officially categorize (an allegation) as unsubstantiated.

  • Stepwise logistic regression analysis was used to determine whether or not there was a relationship between specified factors and the decision to substantiate or unsubstantiate sexual abuse cases.
  • In a memo dated, February 24, 1993, the Department of Social Services instructed its workers to "unsubstantiate" a case if the following were thought to be true:
• 3

  To call into question; to create doubt about.

  • You bring down the high economy of heaven to the standard of human convenience. You pull the fabric of God's moral government to pieces; and unsubstantiate all the solemnity of His proclaimed sayings—all the lofty annunciations of the law, and of the prophets—all that is told of the mighty apparatus of the day of judgment—all that revelation points to, or conscience can suggest, of a living and a reigning God, who will not let Himself down to be affronted or trampled upon by the creatures whom He has formed.
  • And when they can really pick any hole in such characters, and unsubstantiate them, what a pleasure it is !
• 4

  To make insubstantial or abstract; unsubstantialize.

  • Shakespeare's tendency to generalise, spiritualise and unsubstantiate was as great as his capacity to particularise and substantiate.
  • He has been the powerful and effective organ of our Church; and when he goes, no wonder that many feel a void and blank which seems to unsubstantiate their Church, and make it no longer a home to them.

unsubstantiateadj

• 1

  Lacking substance; insubstantial.

  • He thought of his parents and Mary with the tenderness of separation, and felt ashamed because he had neglected his mother's letter for this unknown, unsubstantiate Martha's.
  • He steps over from Divinity unsubstantiate to spiritual substance just as he once descended into the world of matter.
• 2

  Unsubstantiated; unproven.

  • This, however, was a case where the defendant (described in the file as a possible “fly-by-nighter”) made a quite unsubstantiate claim for the goods he was selling.
  • The unsubstantiate slanders made by Teng Hsiao-p'ing can only expose his rapacious design of trying to reverse verdicts, settle accounts and carry out restoration.