What's the difference between confess and profess?

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.

Profess


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To make open declaration of, as of one's knowledge, belief, action, etc.; to avow or acknowledge; to confess publicly; to own or admit freely.
  • (v. t.) To set up a claim to; to make presence to; hence, to put on or present an appearance of.
  • (v. t.) To present to knowledge of, to proclaim one's self versed in; to make one's self a teacher or practitioner of, to set up as an authority respecting; to declare (one's self to be such); as, he professes surgery; to profess one's self a physician.
  • (v. i.) To take a profession upon one's self by a public declaration; to confess.
  • (v. i.) To declare friendship.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The inquiry found the law enforcement agencies routinely fail to record the professions of those whose communications data records they access under Ripa.
  • (2) Significant changes have occurred within the profession of pharmacy in the past few decades which have led to loss of function, social power and status.
  • (3) The last stems from trends such as declining birth rate, an increasingly mobile society, diminished importance of the nuclear family, and the diminishing attractiveness of professions involved with providing maintenance care.
  • (4) This will help nursing grow as a profession, particularly through entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial efforts.
  • (5) Beginning with its foundation by Charles Godon in 1900 he describes the growth of the Federation as an organization of the dental profession which continued despite the interruption of two world wars.
  • (6) The position that it is time for the nursing profession to develop programs leading to the N.D. degree, or professional doctorate, (for the college graduates) derives from consideration of the nature of nursing, the contributions that nurses can make to development of an exemplary health care system, and from the recognized need for nursing to emerge as a full-fledged profession.
  • (7) Dawson argued that the health profession has a history of thinking that social care can be "subsumed by medical decisions" when in reality they are two different cultures.
  • (8) Several of the profession's objectives directly parallel those of adult day-care--to enable individuals to function as independently as possible despite their physical and mental limitations.
  • (9) The proposition put forward in this paper is that standards of nursing practice can only be assured if the profession is able to find ways of responding to the intuitions and gut reactions of its practitioners.
  • (10) Justice Hiley later suggested the conduct required by a doctor outside of his profession, as Chapman was describing it, was perhaps a “broad generality” and not specific enough “to create an ethical obligation.” “It’s no broader than the Hippocratic oath,” Chapman said in her reply.
  • (11) Two years later, the Guardian could point to reforms that owed much to what Ashley called his "bloody-mindedness" in five areas: non-disclosure of victims' names in rape cases; the rights of battered wives; the ending of fuel disconnections for elderly people; a royal commission on the legal profession; and civil liability for damages such as those due to thalidomide victims.
  • (12) But like officials from most other countries represented here – with the notable exception of Britain – Chernishova acknowledges a "general consensus" in her country, in both the media and among the legal profession, on the value of the court's judgments.
  • (13) Until the dental profession defines quality to include psychological, sociologic, and economic factors and establishes measurable standards of performance, dental quality assurance cannot exist in any meaningful way.
  • (14) These findings highlight limitations of the data supplied and suggest that the usefulness of this enviable and unique data source could be enhanced if the medical profession took greater care in clearly stating an International Classification of Diseases diagnosis in a patient's hospital record.
  • (15) An adequate mechanism to implement recertification can emerge only from the profession itself, working through the American Board of Medical Specialties and specialty boards.
  • (16) The duration and severity of the pulmonary abscess, the method of surgical treatment, the lapse of time after the operation, the course of the restorative processes, complications and concomitant diseases, the degree or respiratory and circulatory insufficiency, the patients' age, profession, and the conditions and character of work are taken into account during examination.
  • (17) Alice Wade, a 27-year-old self-professed whiskey aficionado, says she started drinking whiskey in college.
  • (18) One factor contributing to this problem has been the absence of courses on motor vehicle injury from the curriculums of the health professions schools.
  • (19) Directing volunteer nursing expertise and services can greatly benefit the community, the nursing profession, and the nurse.
  • (20) The shock death of the 65-year-old designer in Miami on Thursday has brought renewed focus on the chronic lack of female representation in the profession’s upper ranks in the UK.