Swear vs Profess - What's the difference?
swear | profess | Related terms |
To take an oath.
*
*:The Bat—they called him the Bat.. He'd never been in stir, the bulls had never mugged him, he didn't run with a mob, he played a lone hand, and fenced his stuff so that even the fence couldn't swear he knew his face.
(lb) To use offensive language.
Heavy.
Top-heavy; too high.
Dull; heavy; lazy; slow; reluctant; unwilling.
Niggardly.
A lazy time; a short rest during working hours (especially field labour); a siesta.
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 .
Swear is a related term of profess.
As verbs the difference between swear and profess
is that swear is to take an oath or swear can be to be lazy; rest for a short while during working hours while profess is to administer the vows of a religious order to (someone); to admit to a religious order (chiefly in passive).As a noun swear
is a swearword.As an adjective swear
is heavy.swear
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) sweren, swerien, from (etyl) through Proto-Indo-European.Verb
Synonyms
* See alsoUsage notes
* In sense 1, this is a catenative verb that takes the to infinitive . SeeSynonyms
* See alsoDerived terms
* swear by * swear like a trooper * swear on a stack of Bibles * swear out * swear to God * swear wordEtymology 2
From the above verb, or from (etyl) sware, from (etyl) swaru, from (etyl) .Etymology 3
From (etyl) swer, swar, from (etyl) .Alternative forms
* (l), (l), (l)Adjective
(en-adj)Derived terms
* (l) * (l) * (l)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.