Other forms: professed, professing, professes
To profess is to claim something openly, whether truly or not. Profess ignorance, profess to be, profess a faith.
The doubt is usually built in: to profess to know something invites the listener to disbelieve it. The religious sense is the original, where to profess is to take vows, which is where professor and profession both come from.
1verbprofessTo claim something openly, whether truly or not.
“He professes to love classical music, but I've never seen him at a concert.”
profess is a claiming.
Latin profiteri means to declare openly, from pro- plus fateri, to acknowledge.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰeh₂-
Latin
profitērī
Old French
professer
English, today
profess
Built from
From Old French professer, and its source, the participle stem of Latin profitērī, from pro- + fatērī (“to confess, acknowledge”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA