confessing

Pluralconfessings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of confess.

   After hours of questioning, the suspect finally began confessing to the robbery.

   Confessing to a close friend can ease a guilty conscience.

   Note

   A form that works in both directions of the verb. A penitent can be confessing to a priest, and a priest can be confessing a penitent, meaning hearing their confession. When it means admitting something, it usually takes to (confessing to the robbery). It can also take the thing admitted directly (confessing his sins), and in religious use, the thing professed (confessing the faith).

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of making a confession: an open admission of something one has done wrong.

   Like setting down a heavy bag you've quietly carried for years.

   The suspect's confessing of guilt shortened the trial considerably.

   A sincere confessing can mend a badly damaged friendship.

   Similarconfession, admission, acknowledgment

   Oppositedenial

   Note

   The full noun counts, and it takes a plural. William Gilbert's The Struggle in Ferrara (1871) sets frequent confessings beside prayers and processions as ways of appeasing divine wrath. Unlike the verbal gerund, which takes a direct object, the noun takes adjectives and an of-phrase: frequent confessings, a confessing of guilt.

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