1487 (a1380) J. Barbour Bruce (St. John's Cambr.) xii. 339 Thai haf tald thair reboyting [1489 Adv. rebuting], Thai of the vaward.

1548 Hall's Vnion: Richard III f. xlix^v Y^t his aduersaries in no wise should haue any place apte or oportune easely to take lande withoute defence or rebuttynge back.

1570 in W. Mackay & H. C. Boyd Rec. Inverness (1911) I. 193 The wrangus rabuitting, sklandring and defamyng of Jasper Dempsteris wyff.

1695 W. W. Novum Lumen Chirurgicum Extinctum 39 Sounding the Wound with his Probe, and being alarmed with the rebutting of it by the Systole and Diastole of the Heart.

1737 Rep. Cases Time Late Queen Anne 103 A collateral Warranty may be taken Notice of, as well by Evidence as by Rebutting.

1830 R. Broun Memorabilia Curliana Mabenensia iv. 22 Rebutting, is towards the end of the game [sc. curling], when the ice is blocked up, and the aspect of the game hopeless or desperate, to run the gauntlet through the same.

1838 M. Samuels tr. M. Mendelssohn Jerusalem I. 83 He..strictly confines himself to the rebutting of such [charges] as are more in keeping with these, our highly civilised and cultivated times.

1894 Lowell (Mass.) Daily Sun 17 Mar. 3/4 The plaintiff introduced no witnesses, though they saved the right of rebutting with witnesses.

1926 Times 4 June 16/3 They..gave much impartial information, much of it directed to the rebutting of wild rumours.

1999 P. Berkowitz Virtue & Making Mod. Liberalism iv. 136 Much ink has been spilled in the expounding and rebutting of these criticisms.

1600 W. Cornwallis Ess. I. viii. sig. F2 Patience often proceeds not from the rebutting choller, but from a coldnesse of constitution.

1771 F. Vesey Cases High Court Chancery 2 371 There were two questions in the cause: first, whether the plaintiff has an equity... The second,..whether there was not a rebutting equity.

1796 Invective 3 The dedication of a Poem, the title of which is so rebutting, you may deem inapplicable to a character, which is distinguished for an amiable humanity.

1832 W. E. Du Bois Trial Lucretia Chapman 96 He was then called as a rebutting witness.

1871 Daily News 11 Mar. The rebutting evidence..was exceedingly strong.

1901 N. Amer. Rev. Feb. 248 The medical member of the commission practically testified as a rebutting expert.

1922 J. Joyce Ulysses ii. xv. [Circe] 439 I shall call rebutting evidence to prove up to the hilt that the hidden hand is again at its old game.

1968 Punch 18 Dec. 867/1 The mildness of our rebutting note to Russia brought a load of angry criticism down on Michael Stewart's head.

2005 N.Y. Times (Nexis) 4 Oct. e7 In a rebutting interview, Kimberle Crenshaw..says that such language is typical of the white-dominated news media.