confession

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle English confessioun, from Old French confession, from Latin cōnfessiō, cōnfessiōnem (“confession, acknowledgment, creed or avowal of one's faith”). Displaced native Old English andetnes. Doublet of confessio.

Morphologically confess +‎ -ion.

Sense 6 is a calque of 告白 (kokuhaku).

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /kənˈfɛʃən/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɛʃən

Noun

confession (countable and uncountable, plural confessions)

  1. The open admittance of having done something (especially something bad).
    Without the real murderer's confession, an innocent person could be jailed.
    • c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:
      With a crafty madness keeps aloof, / When we would bring him on to some confession / Of his true state.
    • 2014 November 12, James Martin, “Confessions of a Catholic priest”, in CNN‎[1]:
      If you’re looking for juicier confessions – that is, admissions of the kinds of sins unearthed on detective shows or reality TV – then you’ll want to look elsewhere. My sinning life is rather uneventful.
    • 2023 June 2, Cheri Mossburg, Andi Babineau and Christal Hayes, “‘I’m just tired of covering it up’: Guilt drives man to confess to murder 15 years after killing, police say”, in CNN‎[2]:
      That all changed last month when 37-year-old Peralta borrowed a phone, called police and made a blunt confession to a crime he says he committed nearly 15 years ago, according to an arrest affidavit.
  2. A formal document providing such an admission.
    He forced me to sign a confession!
    • 1968, Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties‎[3], Macmillan Company, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 493:
      Both the basic idea of confession, and the techniques devised by Yezhov for extracting them, however, were to receive significant employment in Asia in the 1950s. The Chinese accused the Americans of waging bacteriological warfare in Korea. The evidence they produced consisted of feathers, insects, clams, rats, and other things riddled with germs and allegedly dropped from American planes. Such evidence was not, on the face of it, very convincing - though even this was accepted by one type of Westerner. To fortify their case, the Chinese resorted to confessions, extracted from American pilots.
  4. (Christianity) The disclosure of one's sins to a priest for absolution. In the Roman Catholic Church, it is now also termed the sacrament of reconciliation.
    I went to confession and now I feel much better about what I had done.
  5. Acknowledgment of belief; profession of one's faith.
  6. A formula in which the articles of faith are comprised; a creed to be assented to or signed, as a preliminary to admission to membership of a church; a confession of faith.
  7. (chiefly Japanese media) The act of professing one's love.

Derived terms

Translations

French

Etymology

Inherited from Old French confession, from Latin cōnfessiōnem (“confession, acknowledgment, creed or avowal of one's faith”).

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /kɔ̃.fɛ.sjɔ̃/ ~ /kɔ̃.fe.sjɔ̃/
  • Audio:(file)
  • Audio (France (Somain)):(file)

Noun

confession f (plural confessions)

  1. confession (admittance of having done something, good, bad or neutral)
  2. confession (the disclosure of one's sins to a priest for absolution)
  3. creed (a declaration of one's religious faith)

Derived terms

Descendants

  • → German: Konfession
  • → Romanian: confesiune

Further reading

Friulian

Noun

confession f (plural confessions)

  1. confession

Middle English

Noun

confession

  1. alternative form of confessioun

Occitan

Etymology

From Latin cōnfessiō.

Pronunciation

Noun

confession f (plural confessions)

  1. confession

Further reading

  • Diccionari General de la Lenga Occitana‎[4], L’Academia occitana – Consistòri del Gai Saber, 2008-2025, page 187

Old French

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin cōnfessiō, cōnfessiōnem.

Noun

confession oblique singular, f (oblique plural confessions, nominative singular confession, nominative plural confessions)

  1. confession (the disclosure of one's sins to a clergyman for absolution)

Descendants

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