Confessing

How to spell confessing

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce confessing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does confessing mean?

1. verbAdmitting openly to a fault, crime, or private truth.

Confessing in a sentence

• She felt lighter after confessing the error to her manager.

• He kept confessing a fondness for old jazz records.

Where does confessing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb confiteri, meaning 'to acknowledge or admit fully', which combined the intensive prefix con- with fateri, 'to confess or own up to'. Its past participle stem confessus passed into Old French as confesser, carrying the sense of admitting a fault or, in the religious sphere, declaring one's sins to a priest. English adopted it in the 1300s, at first in that ecclesiastical context, before it broadened to mean owning up to any wrongdoing or simply admitting a private feeling. The present participle confessing keeps the single doubled s of the Latin fess root, which is the spelling point worth fixing in memory: one f, then a double s. The same fateri ancestry quietly survives in the word 'profess', where the prefix changed but the admitting sense remained.

How the word is built

• con- (intensive, fully)
• fess (from Latin fateri: to acknowledge, admit)
• -ing (present participle)