Meaning & use
prove people wrong
Last updated
Meaning
phraseidiom
To show by your actions or results that people who doubted or criticized you were mistaken.
Grammar: Takes a person as the object: prove someone wrong. The person comes between 'prove' and 'wrong.'
Patterns
- prove someone wrong
- prove everyone wrong
- prove the critics wrong
She was told she would never finish the marathon, but she trained hard and proved people wrong.
The young chef opened his own restaurant and quickly proved the doubters wrong.
He doesn't argue with critics; he just works harder and proves people wrong on the field.
Common combinations
- prove the critics wrong
- The team's surprising victory proved the critics wrong.
- prove everyone wrong
- After the injury, he came back to prove everyone wrong.
- determined to prove someone wrong
- She was determined to prove her old boss wrong.
Synonyms and how they differ
- confound
- More formal and literary; it means to surprise people by proving them wrong, but it is not used for personal doubt in everyday speech.
- disprove
- Used for facts or theories, not people: you disprove a claim, but you prove a person wrong.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: prove people wrong or prove wrong?
prove people wrong vs prove wrong
'Prove wrong' needs a person or thing between the words: prove someone wrong. Without an object, it is incomplete.
Practice
Choose the correct sentence.
Choose one answer.
The pattern is prove + person + wrong, so 'proved the people who doubted her wrong' is correct. The other options place 'wrong' in unnatural positions.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “prove people wrong”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.