Profess vs Tell - What's the difference?
profess | tell |
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:
(reflexive) To declare oneself (to be something).
* 2011 , Alex Needham, The Guardian , 9 Dec.:
(ambitransitive) To declare; to assert, affirm.
* c. 1604 , (William Shakespeare), Measure for Measure , First Folio 1623:
* Milton
* 1974 , ‘The Kansas Kickbacks’, Time , 11 Feb 1974:
*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-07, author=(Gary Younge)
, volume=188, issue=26, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly)
, title= 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:
To declare one's adherence to (a religion, deity, principle etc.).
* 1983 , Alexander Mcleish, The Frontier Peoples of India , Mittal Publications 1984, p.122:
To work as a professor of; to teach.
*, II.12:
*:he was a Spaniard, who about two hundred yeeres since professed Physicke in Tholouse .
(lb) To count, reckon, or enumerate.
:
*1590 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , II.vii:
*:And in his lap a masse of coyne he told , / And turned vpsidowne, to feede his eye / A couetous desire with his huge threasury.
*1875 , Hugh MacMillan, The Sunday Magazine :
*:Only He who made them can tell the number of the stars, and mark the place of each in the order of the one great dominant spiral.
(lb) To narrate.
:
*, chapter=7
, title= (lb) To convey by speech; to say.
:
*, chapter=4
, title= (lb) To instruct or inform.
:
*Bible, (w) xii. 18
*:Why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife?
*
, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=5
, passage=But Miss Thorn relieved the situation by laughing aloud,
(lb) To order; to direct, to say to someone.
:
*(Charles Dickens) (1812-1870)
*:He told her not to be frightened.
*'>citation
*:Stability was restored, but once the re-entry propulsion was activated, the crew was told to prepare to come home before the end of their only day in orbit.
(lb) To discern, notice, identify or distinguish.
:
*
*:Captain Edward Carlisle, soldier as he was, martinet as he was, felt a curious sensation of helplessness seize upon him as he met her steady gaze, her alluring smile; he could not tell what this prisoner might do.
(lb) To reveal.
:
(lb) To be revealed.
*1990 , (Stephen Coonts), Under Siege, 1991 (Pocket Books) edition, ISBN 0671742949, p.409:
*:Cherry looks old, Mergenthaler told himself. His age is telling . Querulous — that's the word. He's become a whining, querulous old man absorbed with trivialities.
(lb) To have an effect, especially a noticeable one; to be apparent, to be demonstrated.
:
*1859 (John Stuart Mill), (On Liberty)
*:Opinion ought [… to give] merited honour to every one, whatever opinion he may holdkeeping nothing back which tells', or can be supposed to ' tell , in their favour.
*{{quote-news, year=2011, date=September 18, author=Ben Dirs, work=BBC Sport
, title= A reflexive, often habitual behavior, (especially) one occurring in a context that often features attempts at deception by persons under psychological stress (such as a poker game or police interrogation), that reveals information that the person exhibiting the behavior is attempting to withhold.
That which is told; tale; account.
* Walpole
(internet) A private message to an individual in a chat room; a whisper.
(archaeology) A mound, originally in the Middle East, over or consisting of the ruins of ancient settlements.
As verbs the difference between profess and tell
is that profess is to administer the vows of a religious order to (someone); to admit to a religious order (chiefly in passive) while tell is (lb) to count, reckon, or enumerate.As a noun tell is
a reflexive, often habitual behavior, (especially) one occurring in a context that often features attempts at deception by persons under psychological stress (such as a poker game or police interrogation), that reveals information that the person exhibiting the behavior is attempting to withhold or tell can be (archaeology) a mound, originally in the middle east, over or consisting of the ruins of ancient settlements.profess
English
Verb
(es)- This swayed the balance decisively in Mary's favour, and she was professed on 8 September 1578.
- Kiefer professes himself amused by the fuss that ensued when he announced that he was buying the Mülheim-Kärlich reactor.
- He professes to haue receiued no sinister measure from his Iudge, but most willingly humbles himselfe to the determination of Iustice.
- The best and wisest of them all professed / To know this only, that he nothing knew.
- The Governor immediately professed that he knew nothing about the incident.
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,
- Ed Miliband professed ignorance of the comment when he was approached by the BBC later.
- The remainder of the population, about two-thirds, belongs to the Mongolian race and professes Buddhism.
External links
* *tell
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) ((etyl) telja). More at tale.Verb
The Mirror and the Lamp, passage=“
Mr. Pratt's Patients, passage=I told him about everything I could think of; and what I couldn't think of he did. He asked about six questions during my yarn, but every question had a point to it. At the end he bowed and thanked me once more. As a thanker he was main-truck high; I never see anybody so polite.}}
Rugby World Cup 2011: England 41-10 Georgia, passage=But England's superior fitness told in the second half, with Delon Armitage, Manu Tuilagi and Chris Ashton (two) going over for tries to secure a bonus-point win.}}
Synonyms
* (enumerate) count * (narrate) narrate, recount, relateAntonyms
* (to instruct or inform) askDerived terms
* all told * tell against * tell all * tell-all * tell off * tell on * tell-tale / telltale * tell tales * tell tales out of school * tellerNoun
(en noun)- I am at the end of my tell .