# confront

Pronunciation: say "kuhn-FRUNT" /kənˈfɹʌnt/

## Verb

1. To stand face to face with someone, especially in competition, hostility, or defiance.
   - Simple: To meet someone face to face, often to argue or fight.
   - _Soldiers must confront the enemy without hesitation._
   - _She confronted her accuser in open court._
2. To deal with something, especially a problem or difficulty, rather than avoiding it.
   - Simple: To deal with a hard problem or situation directly.
   - _Leaders must confront the housing crisis head-on._
   - _The company confronted falling sales by cutting prices._
3. To come up against something or encounter it, often without warning.
   - Simple: To meet a problem or thing you did not expect.
   - _Travelers often confront language barriers abroad._
   - _Researchers confronted unexpected results during the trial._
4. To bring someone face to face with a fact, person, or situation.
   - Simple: To make someone face a fact or person directly.
   - _Detectives confronted the suspect with the security footage._
   - _The report will confront readers with hard truths about pollution._
5. To engage in a confrontation; to take an openly hostile stance toward another.
   - Simple: To start a fight or argument instead of staying calm.
   - _When tensions rise, some people prefer to confront rather than retreat._
   - _The rivals confronted openly at the meeting._
6. To place a thing facing another, or set it in contrast to something else.
   - Simple: To place one thing facing another to show a difference.
   - _The curator confronted the original sketch with the finished painting._
   - _Critics often confront the film with its source novel._
7. To set a thing side by side with another in order to compare them.
   - Simple: To put two things side by side to compare them.
   - _Scholars confront the two manuscripts to find differences in wording._
   - _The auditor confronted the figures with the bank records._

## Origin

This comes from Middle French confronter, from Medieval Latin cōnfrontāre, formed from con- plus frontem meaning "front" or "forehead."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/confront (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).