confessor

• confessour (obsolete)

From Middle English confessor, confessour, from Anglo-Norman confessour, and its source, Latin cōnfessor, from cōnfiteor (“confess, admit, acknowledge”).^[1] By surface analysis, confess +‎ -or.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /kənˈfɛsə/, /ˈkɒnfɛs(ɔ)ə/, /ˈkɒnfɛsɔː/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /kənˈfɛsɚ/
• Rhymes: -ɛsə(ɹ)

confessor (plural confessors)

2. One who confesses faith in Christianity in the face of persecution, but who is not martyred.

   Coordinate term: martyr

   Long before Edward I, the English had a King Edward who they considered a martyr and a King Edward who they considered a confessor.

   • 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 174:

     Confessors provided the troubled Church with an alternative sort of authority based on their sufferings, particularly when arguments began about how and how much to forgive those Christians who had given way to imperial orders – the so-called ‘lapsed’.

4. One who confesses to having done something wrong.

   Near-synonym: confessant

6. (Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism) A priest who hears confession and then gives absolution.

   Synonym: father confessor

   Coordinate term: confessant

8. (by extension, figurative) Someone who acts as listener and helper.
   • 1994 October, Larry Gross, “Coming Out On the Soaps”, in Gay Community News‎^[1], page 14:

     They do not feel connected to any gay/lesbian communities. Nor do they feel able to establish relationships with anyone who can support them. Thus an inexperienced but sincere young heterosexual actor can find himself playing not only role model but also confessor and phantom friend to people in great need.

• Beccari, C. (1908) The Catholic Encyclopedia‎^[2], New York: Robert Appleton Company, retrieved 24 May 2009, Confessor

Learned borrowing from Latin cōnfessōrem.

• IPA^(key): (Central) [kuɱ.fəˈso]
• IPA^(key): (Balearic) [koɱ.fəˈso]
• IPA^(key): (Valencia) [koɱ.feˈsoɾ]

confessor m (plural confessors, feminine confessora, feminine plural confessores)

1. (Christianity) confessor of the faith
2. confessor (priest who hears confessions)

   Synonym: confés

• confessar

• “confessor”, in Diccionari de la llengua catalana [Dictionary of the Catalan Language] (in Catalan), second edition, Institute of Catalan Studies [Catalan: Institut d'Estudis Catalans], April 2007

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [kõːˈfɛs.sɔr]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [koɱˈfɛs.sor]

cōnfessor m (genitive cōnfessōris); third declension

1. confessor of the Christian faith
2. martyr

Third-declension noun.

• Catalan: confessor
• English: confessor
• French: confesseur
• Italian: confessore
• Portuguese: confessor
• Spanish: confesor

• “confessor”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• "confessor", in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)

Borrowed from Latin cōnfessōrem.

• Hyphenation: con‧fes‧sor

confessor m (plural confessores, feminine confessora, feminine plural confessoras)

1. (religion) confessor (one who confesses faith in a religion, especially Christianity)
2. (Roman Catholicism) confessor (priest who hears confession)

confessor m (plural confessores)

1. obsolete spelling of confesor