Verb

(es)

To declare freely and openly; to assert.

* Shakespeare

if this which he avouches does appear

* Spenser

Such antiquities could have been avouched for the Irish.

To acknowledge deliberately; to admit; to confess; to sanction.

* Bible, Deuteronomy xxvi. 17

Thou hast avouched the Lord this day to be thy God.

To confirm or verify, to affirm the validity of.

* Milman

We might be disposed to question its authenticity, it if were not avouched by the full evidence.

To appeal to; to cite or claim as authority.

* Edward Coke

They avouch many successions of authorities.

Verb

(es)

To administer the vows of a religious order to (someone); to admit to a religious order. (Chiefly in passive.)

* 2000 , Butler's Lives of the Saints , p.118:

This swayed the balance decisively in Mary's favour, and she was professed on 8 September 1578.

(reflexive) To declare oneself (to be something).

* 2011 , Alex Needham, The Guardian , 9 Dec.:

Kiefer professes himself amused by the fuss that ensued when he announced that he was buying the Mülheim-Kärlich reactor.

(ambitransitive) To declare; to assert, affirm.

* c. 1604 , (William Shakespeare), Measure for Measure , First Folio 1623:

He professes to haue receiued no sinister measure from his Iudge, but most willingly humbles himselfe to the determination of Iustice.

* Milton

The best and wisest of them all professed / To know this only, that he nothing knew.

* 1974 , ‘The Kansas Kickbacks’, Time , 11 Feb 1974:

The Governor immediately professed that he knew nothing about the incident.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-07, author=(Gary Younge)

, volume=188, issue=26, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Hypocrisy lies at heart of Manning prosecution , passage=WikiLeaks did not cause these uprisings but it certainly informed them. The dispatches revealed details of corruption and kleptocracy that many Tunisians suspected,

To make a claim (to be something), to lay claim to (a given quality, feeling etc.), often with connotations of insincerity.

* 2010 , Hélène Mulholland, The Guardian , 28 Sep 2010:

Ed Miliband professed ignorance of the comment when he was approached by the BBC later.

To declare one's adherence to (a religion, deity, principle etc.).

* 1983 , Alexander Mcleish, The Frontier Peoples of India , Mittal Publications 1984, p.122:

The remainder of the population, about two-thirds, belongs to the Mongolian race and professes Buddhism.

To work as a professor of; to teach.

*, II.12:

*:he was a Spaniard, who about two hundred yeeres since professed Physicke in Tholouse .