CONFESSION • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Confession

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/kənfˈɛʃən/ Listen

noun

Confession n.

1.

Acknowledgment; avowal, especially in a matter pertaining to one's self; the admission of a debt, obligation, or crime. "With a crafty madness keeps aloof, When we would bring him on to some confession Of his true state."

2.

Acknowledgment of belief; profession of one's faith. "With the mouth confession is made unto salvation."

3.

(Eccl.) The act of disclosing sins or faults to a priest in order to obtain sacramental absolution. "Auricular confession... or the private and special confession of sins to a priest for the purpose of obtaining his absolution."

4.

A formulary 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.

5.

(Law) An admission by a party to whom an act is imputed, in relation to such act. A judicial confession settles the issue to which it applies; an extrajudical confession may be explained or rebutted.

Confession and avoidance (Law), a mode of pleading in which the party confesses the facts as stated by his adversary, but alleges some new matter by way of avoiding the legal effect claimed for them.

Confession of faith, a formulary containing the articles of faith; a creed.

General confession, the confession of sins made by a number of persons in common, as in public prayer.

Westminster Confession. See Westminster Assembly, under Assembly.

See images of 'Confession'

Etymology of 'Confession'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Confession" Quotes from Famous Books

... there, a desperate temptation assailed her. It seemed desperate to her—to many another woman it would have appeared only the natural course to pursue—to turn her back upon the church, to put off the hard moment of confession, to go down again into the city, and to say to herself that there was no harm in seeing Don Giovanni, provided she never let him speak of love. Why should he speak of it? Had she any reason to suppose there was danger to her in anything he ...

— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... grossest forms all around), the Jew stood up in unfaltering protest against all. Persecutions, proscriptions, tortures in every form, were of no avail. On the gibbet, on the rack, amid the flames, his last words embodied the central confession of Judaism, "O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord." Christianity, the appointed custodier of the still more central truth, "God is love," had to all appearance failed of its mission; had not only merged its higher ...

— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown

... than has been reported by those "abstracts and brief chronicles of the time," the Southern newspapers, which are now all of one party, and defer to the ruling sentiment among the whites. The exodus has wrung from two or three of the more candid and independent journals, however, a virtual confession of the fiendish practices of bulldozing in their insistance that these practices must be abandoned. The non-resident land owners and the resident planters, the city factors and the country merchants of means and respectability, have ...

— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... confession frankly, yet this call comes from no such desire. I had no question when I came, but what I had been sent for—you will ...

— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... I have to make a confession, which is very painful to my self-esteem. The morning after I arrived in the Chinese capital I received a telegram thus worded, in reply to the one I had ...

— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com