FromOld Frenchprofesser, and its source, the participle stem ofLatinprofitērī, frompro- +fatērī(“to confess, acknowledge”).
profess (third-person singular simple presentprofesses,present participleprofessing,simple past and past participleprofessed)
- (transitive, chiefly passive voice) Toadminister thevows of areligious order to (someone); to admit to areligious order.[from 14th c.]
2000,Butler's Lives of the Saints, page118:This swayed the balance decisively in Mary's favour, and she wasprofessed on 8 September 1578.
- (reflexive) Todeclare oneself (to be something).[from 16th c.]
2011 December 9, Alex Needham, “Anselm Kiefer: ‘Art is difficult, it's not entertainment’”, inThe Guardian[1]:Kieferprofesses himself amused by the fuss that ensued when he announced that he was buying the Mülheim-Kärlich reactor […].
- (ambitransitive) Todeclare; toassert,affirm.[from 16th c.]
c.1603–1604 (date written),William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, inMr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, andEd[ward] Blount, published1623,→OCLC,[Act III, scene i]:Heprofesses to haue receiued no sinister measure from his Iudge, but most willingly humbles himselfe to the determination of Iustice […].
1974 February 11, “The Kansas Kickbacks”, inTime:The Governor immediatelyprofessed that he knew nothing about the incident.
2013 June 7,Gary Younge, “Hypocrisy lies at heart of Manning prosecution”, inThe Guardian Weekly[2], volume188, number26, page18:WikiLeaks did not cause these uprisings but it certainly informed them. The dispatches revealed details of corruption and kleptocracy that many Tunisians suspected, […]. They also exposed the blatant discrepancy between the west'sprofessed values and actual foreign policies.
- (transitive) To make aclaim (to be something); to lay claim to (a given quality, feeling etc.), often with connotations of insincerity.[from 16th c.]
2010 September 28, Hélène Mulholland, “David Miliband voices displeasure during Labour leader's speech”, inThe Guardian[3]:Ed Milibandprofessed ignorance of the comment when he was approached by the BBC later.
2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, inEnglish World-Wide[4], page13:Caution needs to be exercised in regards to claims of coinage as the data contained a number of examples of writersprofessing the invention of a term that had actually been in existence for many years.
- (transitive) To declare one'sadherence to (a religion, deity, principle etc.).[from 16th c.]
1604, Jeremy Corderoy,A Short Dialogve, wherein is Proved, that No Man can be Saved without Good VVorkes, 2nd edition, Oxford: Printed by Ioseph Barnes, and are to be sold inPaules Church-yard at the signe of the Crowne, by Simon Waterson,→OCLC,page40:[N]ow ſuch a liue vngodly, vvithout a care of doing the wil of the Lord (though theyprofeſſe him in their mouths, yea though they beleeue and acknowledge all the Articles of the Creed, yea haue knowledge of the Scripturs) yet if they liue vngodly, they deny God, and therefore ſhal be denied,[…]
1983, Alexander Mcleish,The Frontier Peoples of India, Mittal Publications, published1984, page122:The remainder of the population, about two-thirds, belongs to the Mongolian race andprofesses Buddhism.
- (transitive) To work as aprofessor of; toteach.[from 16th c.]
- (transitive, now rare) To claim to haveknowledge or understanding of (a given area of interest, subject matter).[from 16th c.]
to administer the vows of a religious order to (someone)
to admit to a religious order
(reflexive) to declare oneself (to be something)
to declare; to assert; to affirm
to work as a professor of; to teach
- “profess”, inWebster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.:G. & C. Merriam,1913,→OCLC.
- William Dwight Whitney,Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “profess”, inThe Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.:The Century Co.,→OCLC.
