Confesses

How to spell confesses

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce confesses

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does confesses mean?

1. verbAdmits or acknowledges something, often a fault, crime, or private truth.

Confesses in a sentence

• The suspect usually confesses only after the lawyer arrives.

• She always confesses that numbers were never her strong subject.

Where does confesses come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the third-person singular form of the verb confess, which English took from the Old French confesser in the 1300s. The French word descended from the Latin confiteri, meaning to acknowledge or to own up to something, built from the intensive prefix con- and fateri, the verb meaning to admit or to declare. The double letter pattern survives because the Latin past-participle stem was confessus, where the s sound doubled, and that is exactly the spot that trips writers who expect a single s. In its earliest English uses the word carried a strongly religious flavour, describing someone declaring their faith or admitting sins to a priest, and only later widened to the everyday sense of admitting any wrongdoing or fact. The same fateri root also gives us profess and confession, so the family resemblance can help anchor the spelling.

How the word is built

• con- (intensive: fully)
• fess (from Latin fateri/confess-: to acknowledge)
• -es (third-person singular verb ending)