confession

What it means

1. countableuncountableThe open admittance of having done something (especially something bad).

   Without the real murderer's confession, an innocent person could be jailed.

   3 more examples

   With a crafty madness keeps aloof, / When we would bring him on to some confession / Of his true state.

   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]

   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.

   2014 November 12, James Martin, “Confessions of a Catholic priest”, in CNN

   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.

   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. countableuncountableA formal document providing such an admission.

   He forced me to sign a confession!

   1 more example

   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.

   1968, Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties, Macmillan Company, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 493

3. countableuncountableChristianityThe 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.

   1 more example

   Hauing diſpleaſ'd my Father, to Lawrence Cell, / To make confeſſion, and to be abſolu'd.

   c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, (please specify the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)]

In a sentence

Without the real murderer's confession, an innocent person could be jailed.

Where it comes from

1. Latincōnfessiō, cōnfessiōnem“confession, acknowledgment, creed or avowal of one's faith”
2. Old Frenchconfession
3. Middle Englishconfessioun
4. Englishconfession

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).