confession
/kənˈfɛʃən/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.88 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The open admittance of having done something (especially something bad).
Countable; Uncountable
noun
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.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
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.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Without the real murderer's confession, an innocent person could be jailed."
- "With a crafty madness keeps aloof, / When we would bring him on to some confession / Of his true state."
- "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."
- "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."
- "He forced me to sign a confession!"
- "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."
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).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: confessioun, confession, cōnfessiō
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Law.