All 7 Uses of
profess
in
Middlemarch
- I don't profess to understand every young lady's taste.†
Chpt 1 *profess = claim
- "I will not profess bravery," said Lydgate, smiling, "but I acknowledge a good deal of pleasure in fighting, and I should not care for my profession, if I did not believe that better methods were to be found and enforced there as well as everywhere else."†
Chpt 2
- "Very well," said Mr. Vincy, kicking in spite of resolutions, "I never professed to be anything but worldly; and, what's more, I don't see anybody else who is not worldly.†
Chpt 2professed = claimed
- He does not profess to have more than second-hand knowledge there.†
Chpt 2profess = claim
- Farebrother says, he doesn't believe Brooke would get elected if the opportunity came: the very men who profess to be for him would bring another member out of the bag at the right moment.†
Chpt 5
- The pitiable lot is that of the man who could not call himself a martyr even though he were to persuade himself that the men who stoned him were but ugly passions incarnate—who knows that he is stoned, not for professing the Right, but for not being the man he professed to be.†
Chpt 8professing = claiming
- The pitiable lot is that of the man who could not call himself a martyr even though he were to persuade himself that the men who stoned him were but ugly passions incarnate—who knows that he is stoned, not for professing the Right, but for not being the man he professed to be.†
Chpt 8professed = claimed
Definitions:
-
(1)
(profess) to claim (openly state) -- sometimes insincerely
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much more rarely, profess can mean:- to teach or be knowledgeable of -- as in "profess chemistry"
- practice as a profession -- as in "profess medicine"
- proclaim belief in or allegiance to -- as in "profess Catholicism"