Confessed

How to spell confessed

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce confessed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does confessed mean?

1. verbPast tense of confess: admitted or acknowledged something, often a fault, crime, or hidden feeling.
2. adjectiveOpenly acknowledged or self-admitted, used before a noun to describe someone who freely admits a trait.

Confessed in a sentence

• verb

  After hours of questioning, the suspect finally confessed to the theft.

• adjective

  As a confessed workaholic, she rarely took a full weekend off.

• verb

  She confessed that she had forgotten to send the invoice on time.

• adjective

  The critic, a confessed fan of the director, struggled to stay neutral.

Where does confessed come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb confiteri, meaning 'to acknowledge' or 'to admit', which combined the intensifying prefix con- with fateri, 'to confess or own up to something'. That same fateri lies behind 'profess' and 'fateful' relatives, and it carried the sense of openly declaring what one had previously held back. English took the base verb 'confess' through Old French confesser in the 1300s, when it was used heavily in a religious sense for admitting sins to a priest. The past form 'confessed' simply adds the regular -ed ending, and the single s of fateri became the doubled ss in the French and English spellings, which is the small trap writers face. Over time the meaning broadened from religious admission to any frank acknowledgement of a fact, fault, or feeling.

How the word is built

• con- (intensive/together)
• fess (from fateri: to acknowledge, admit)
• -ed (past tense suffix)