Other forms: confessed, confesses, confessing
To confess is to admit something you are ashamed of or have hidden. Confess to the crime, confess everything, I must confess.
It takes to before a noun or an -ing form — confess to taking it — and no preposition before a clause: he confessed that he had lied. In religion, confession is the formal admission of sins to a priest, which is the older use. I must confess is a mild conversational softener before an opinion, with no guilt involved at all. Note confession, both the act and the statement, and that a signed confession is a legal document.
1verbconfessTo admit something you are ashamed of.
“He confessed after about six hours of questioning.”
2verbmildlyTo admit something mildly embarrassing.
“I confess I had never heard of the place.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
confess is a way of admitting.
Latin confiteri is con-, wholly, plus fateri, to acknowledge — the same root as profess. To confess is to acknowledge wholly, which is why a partial confession sounds like a contradiction in terms.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰeh₂-
Latin
confessus
Old French
confesser
Anglo-Norman
confesser
Middle English
confessen
English, today
confess
Built from
From Middle English confessen, from Anglo-Norman confesser, from Old French confesser, from Latin confessus (Old French confés), past participle of cōnfiteor (“to confess, admit”) from con- + fateor (“to admit”). Displaced Middle English andetten (“to confess, admit”) (from Old English andettan). a doublet of confiteor. - 告%白.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA