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 .

Verb

(es)

(senseid) To admit to the truth, particularly in the context of sins or crimes committed.

People confess to anything under torture.

* Shakespeare

I never gave it him. Send for him hither, / And let him confess a truth.

* Milton

And there confess / Humbly our faults, and pardon beg.

* Addison

I must confess I was most pleased with a beautiful prospect that none of them have mentioned.

To acknowledge faith in; to profess belief in.

* Bible, Matthew x. 32

Whosoever, therefore, shall confess' me before men, him will I ' confess , also, before my Father which is in heaven.

* Bible, Acts xxiii. 8

For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess both.

(religion) To unburden (oneself) of sins to a priest, in order to receive absolution.

* Addison

Our beautiful votary took an opportunity of confessing herself to this celebrated father.

(religion) To hear or receive such a confession of sins from.

* Ld. Berners

He heard mass, and the prince, his son, with him, and the most part of his company were confessed .

(senseid) To disclose or reveal.

* Alexander Pope

Tall thriving trees confessed the fruitful mould.