1 ~ (to sth / to doing sth) to admit, especially formally or to the police, that you have done sth wrong or illegal:
[V] She confessed to the murder. * After hours of questioning, the suspect confessed. * [V(that)] He confessed that he had stolen the money. * [VN] We persuaded her to confess her crime.
2 ~ (to sth / to doing sth) to admit sth that you feel ashamed or embarrassed about:
[VN] She was reluctant to confess her ignorance. * [V] I must confess to knowing nothing about computers. * [VN-ADJ] (formal) I confess myself bewildered by their explanation. [also V(that), Vspeech]
seealsoSELF-CONFESSED
3 [V, VN] ~ (sth) (to sb) (especially in the Roman Catholic Church) to tell God or a priest about the bad things you have done so that you can say that you are sorry and be forgiven
4 [VN] (of a priest) to hear sb confess their SINS (= the bad things they have done)
Rate this entry
About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for confess is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is confess a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, confess is tagged as verb.
Does confess appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — confess appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
