What's the difference between avow and confess?

Avow


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To declare openly, as something believed to be right; to own or acknowledge frankly; as, a man avows his principles or his crimes.
  • (v. t.) To acknowledge and justify, as an act done. See Avowry.
  • (n.) Avowal.
  • (n.) To bind, or to devote, by a vow.
  • (n.) A vow or determination.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) How can she be so self-avowedly hip (Revolver, reefer) and yet so naive (swinging)?
  • (2) Discontent with the monarchy is no longer confined to avowedly republican parties or rightwingers, who have never forgiven the king for introducing democracy and transforming the state handed to him by dictator General Francisco Franco on his death in 1975, when Spain's historically fragile monarchy was restored for the second time in a century.
  • (3) The avowedly antisemitic National Socialists of the NRM are the extreme wing of this spectrum, Poohl says.
  • (4) For an avowed elitist, he had a remarkable ability to talk to a crowd.
  • (5) That, and the strong possibility that Obama was not referring to just those 1.5 million, but to some larger percentage of the 51% of Americans who disapprove of the job he's doing – a group that, statistically speaking, can't just consist of avowed racists.
  • (6) Snyder mentions Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán , who avowedly seeks the creation of an “illiberal” state, and who, says Snyder, “looks fondly on that period as one of healthy national consciousness”.
  • (7) But the rise of Ukip looks to me to be legitimising a very different view, in which the average English person will be characterised as an avowed Eurosceptic, a fierce opponent of immigration, a hang-'em-and-flog-'em merchant, and a hater of government.
  • (8) In September the telegenic Tsipras, an avowed atheist, made a trip to Rome to hold talks with Pope Francis.
  • (9) They are avowedly non-violent in their approach, but do not shy away from supporting specific “mujahedeen” groups in current conflicts, though this support has rarely been found to go beyond the rhetorical and is confined to wars within the Muslim world.
  • (10) In November 1962, six years after she left the Communist party, an MI5 officer wrote, in a file stamped “secret and personal”: “She is known to have retained extreme leftwing views and she takes an interest in African affairs as an avowed opponent of racial discrimination.
  • (11) In another video Shekau made an avowal that "we will continue to carry out such school attacks till our last breath".
  • (12) For his father, an avowed “leftist liberal”, Romanos is typical of a younger generation who, although middle-class and privileged, have been radicalised by growing up in a nation whose political establishment is blamed for the devastation wrought by its brush with bankruptcy.
  • (13) What DfE ministers and civil servants will make of this ideological clash is anyone’s guess but, since the avowed aim of the free school programme is to let a thousand flowers bloom, it would be surprising if Livingstone’s Hammersmith proposal failed.
  • (14) But they also mentioned the possibility of him cracking down on immigration, despite the mayor of London being avowedly pro-immigration .
  • (15) The Russian targets so far include a small number of avowedly secular fighters who have received limited backing from the United States and the Gulf states.
  • (16) I have remained a party member and avowedly a Trotskyist.
  • (17) Like Mandela, he was a black revolutionary, a prisoner turned president who avowed racial reconciliation and became a darling of the west.
  • (18) Factor analyses of the children's responses yielded three interpretable factors: a tendency to despise the victims of bullies; general admiration for school bullies; and avowed support for intervention to assist the victim.
  • (19) Sexual function after prostatectomy, particularly perirenal, has been reviewed in 128 patients treated in private practice for the past twenty years by one urologist with an avowed bias to encouraging postoperative sexual function.
  • (20) That may not be all that surprising given the march of Europhobia through the Tory party, but it is nevertheless striking that so many Conservatives preferred an avowed enemy of their party who describes the prime minister as a conman over their current coalition partner.

Confess


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To make acknowledgment or avowal in a matter pertaining to one's self; to acknowledge, own, or admit, as a crime, a fault, a debt.
  • (v. t.) To acknowledge faith in; to profess belief in.
  • (v. t.) To admit as true; to assent to; to acknowledge, as after a previous doubt, denial, or concealment.
  • (v. t.) To make known or acknowledge, as one's sins to a priest, in order to receive absolution; -- sometimes followed by the reflexive pronoun.
  • (v. t.) To hear or receive such confession; -- said of a priest.
  • (v. t.) To disclose or reveal, as an effect discloses its cause; to prove; to attest.
  • (v. i.) To make confession; to disclose sins or faults, or the state of the conscience.
  • (v. i.) To acknowledge; to admit; to concede.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But there was a clear penalty on Diego Costa – it is a waste of time and money to have officials by the side of the goal because normally they do nothing – and David Luiz’s elbow I didn’t see, I confess.
  • (2) Social workers were branded as communists and detained till they confessed, often after coercive treatment.
  • (3) So it was not altogether a surprise this weekend when Elio di Rupo, the socialist charged with trying to form a viable coalition in Belgium, confessed failure to King Albert.
  • (4) RTL said Trierweiler had let it be known that she had not had a "nervous breakdown" when Hollande confessed to his alleged affair with Julie Gayet, 41, hours before Closer magazine published its "special edition" claiming Hollande had been secretly leaving the Elysée Palace for secret trysts with the actor.
  • (5) Klitschko is a self-confessed control freak; so Fury was trying to rattle him out of his rhythm.
  • (6) Yet, the long list of allegations included no statement from Kenneth Bae, other than claims that he confessed and didn't want an attorney present during his sentencing last week for what Pyongyang called hostile acts against the state.
  • (7) All of the hypotheses tested were supported, indicating that there are three primary factors associated with the reasons why criminals make confessions during interrogation.
  • (8) After her release, she confirmed that she had been pressured by threats and menaces to confess to criminal acts that she had never perpetrated.
  • (9) According to Amnesty International, the death penalty “is so far removed from any kind of legal parameters that it is almost hard to believe”, with the use of torture to extract confessions commonplace.
  • (10) Speaking at a press conference following the preview of his latest film, Melancholia, von Trier expressed sympathy for Hitler, remarked that Israel was "a pain in the arse" and jokingly confessed to being a Nazi .
  • (11) He confessed to over-indulgence in this pleasure at some stages of his life, and to the recreational use of drugs.
  • (12) The rightwing extremist who confessed to the mass killings in Norway boasted in court on Monday that there were two more cells from his terror network still at large, prompting an international investigation for collaborators.
  • (13) He throws confessions about his love of guns or his lust for violence into restaurant conversations, but his inanely sophisticated companions carry on conversing about the varieties of sushi or the use of fur by leading designers.
  • (14) The survivors of the emergency regime of detention camps were "screened" – or violently interrogated – in order to extract confessions.
  • (15) It is exciting to watch a detective interviewing a suspect, and getting that suspect to make admissions or confess to a murder.
  • (16) "All right-minded people will be angry and disturbed that a freely given confession, by someone of sound mind, taped and witnessed, can no longer be used as evidence in a court of law," he said.
  • (17) He confessed the sense of "personal strain" had been unprecedented.
  • (18) Her boyfriend, who confessed to the crime, had been helped by his mother.
  • (19) Moreover, the state-controlled Chinese media have in a series of broadcasts denounced a number of detained “suspects” as members of a crime syndicate engaging in “rights-defence-style troublemaking”, and paraded some of those detained “confessing” to wrongdoing before they have even been publicly indicted.
  • (20) She were remorseful all right,” pouted Mercedes, a woman who only has to raise one on-fleek eyebrow to garner a full confession.