Refuted ?

In which case, we see it differently, don't we? Anything I wouldn't play because it's patently bad is to me, refuted. Why does have refuted have to mean "shown to be lost"? Why not "shown to be bad"? I'll show that my line there is bad - he should play 1.d4, 2.c4 and save two tempi. It is clearly bad.

Because that's what it means. It's the perfect tense of "to refute". For a line to be refuted, someone in the past must have gone and found a refutation.

Why can't you just call a line like that "patently bad", or "something I clearly wouldn't ever play", "unplayable", or perhaps just some made up word that didn't have a perfectly good meaning yet? :-)

If I'm not mistaken, most recent engines consider +0.3 as a slight advantage (+=), +0.75 as a significant advantage (+/-) and +1.25 as a decisive advantage (+-) in their eval outputs.

But of course, they're sometimes wrong

 Thats why an argument like this can never be settled, because we dont all agree on what "refuted" means. Lasker was famous for playing bad moves and even into "bad positions" in order to make his opponent try and "refute" his play and yet he became WC playing like this.

Indeedy, Reb... but I think there's a distinction between psychological ploys and plain bad moves.

Scarblac, dictionary definition of refuted - 2. to prove (a person) to be in error.

In this case the opening would replace person. I'd say a patently bad opening was proven to be 'in error'.

I challenge you to find me something that categorically states that 'refuted' means 'shown to be lost'.

Have a read of the My Great Predecessors series - Kasparov can be found saying things like "Euwe refuted this entire line by playing ...xxx and getting a good position with Black".

Key word being prove. Without a proof, nothing has been proven yet.

All that said, the argument that this line loses two full tempi over a line that white could also have played, without any zugzwang or so in sight, and therefore must be worse than just playing c4 and d4 - that's pretty much a logical proof that the line is bad, in the sense that it's clear there are better alternatives, this can't be the best.

So perhaps this line is now refuted. Heh.

I haven't been following this thread, so please disregard my remarks.

Sometimes tempi are valuable; maybe most of the time. Sometimes they are clearly not worth much, and in some cases may be counterproductive. Two examples of counterproductive tempi would include: a) being on the move in zugzwang or relinquishing the vital opposition, and b) playing some Black defences from the White side (e.g., 1.Nc3 is treated with more disdain than 1. ... Nc6 by most; KIA versus KID, to a lesser extent). Perhaps these are lousy examples, but they at least caution one to examine the real value of tempi in the actual situation.

Still, most of the time, give me the two tempi.

Great point.  In a way amateur chessplayers armed with time, computers, and top software are like amateur astronomers with time, good equipment, and digital image processing.  Such amateurs make significant contributions to astronomy all the time -- as in the recent discovery by an Australian amateur of a comet impact on Jupiter.  

The Silicon has leveled the playing field in opening theory considerably.

This discussion started with a chess definition of refuted, but I think that definition, in turn, depends critically on the general meaning of refuted, which my dictionary lists as "to prove as false or erroneous."

That is a much higher bar than simply "to prove as somewhat inferior".   I think the original chess definition cited by Reb was simply trying to state that in chess terms.

Given the plain meaning of 'refute' in ordinary discourse, it looks to me like the word is often misused in chess writing - or at the very least, overused.

 Take the silicon away from the amateur though and the GM still slaughters him otb.....

Sure.  No question.  But the DISCOVERY may still be valid, and may well find its way into some GM's repetoire.

Say, which Shirov-Carlsen game are you talking about? It's not in the 2009 Mega database and I didn't find anything in chessgames.com

Objectively refuted might not be subjectively refuted, and vise versa