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PROFESSED
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Openly declared as such
Example:
McKinley was assassinated by a professed anarchist
Synonyms:
avowed; professed
Classified under:
Similar:
declared (made known or openly avowed)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Claimed with intent to deceive
Example:
his professed intentions
Classified under:
Similar:
declared (made known or openly avowed)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Professing to be qualified
Example:
a professed philosopher
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
professional (engaged in a profession or engaging in as a profession or means of livelihood)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Past simple / past participle of the verb profess
Context examples:
This passion Celine had professed to return with even superior ardour.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Hope was over, entirely over; and when Jane could attend to the rest of the letter, she found little, except the professed affection of the writer, that could give her any comfort.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
But when society is the name for such hollow gentlemen and ladies, Julia, and when its breeding is professed indifference to everything that can advance or can retard mankind, I think we must have lost ourselves in that same Desert of Sahara, and had better find the way out.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Sir Walter, on being applied to, without actually withholding his consent, or saying it should never be, gave it all the negative of great astonishment, great coldness, great silence, and a professed resolution of doing nothing for his daughter.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
Emma and Harriet professed very high expectations of pleasure from it; and Mr. Weston, unasked, promised to get Frank over to join them, if possible; a proof of approbation and gratitude which could have been dispensed with.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
It was with reluctance that he suffered her to go; but there was no look of despair in parting to belie his words, or give her hopes of his being less unreasonable than he professed himself.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
But he added, that since I professed so inviolable an attachment to truth, I must give him my word and honour to bear him company in this voyage, without attempting any thing against my life; or else he would continue me a prisoner till we arrived at Lisbon.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
She had obviously not heard anything to her advantage: and it seemed to me, from her prolonged fit of gloom and taciturnity, that she herself, notwithstanding her professed indifference, attached undue importance to whatever revelations had been made her.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Darcy professed a great curiosity to see the view from the Mount, and Elizabeth silently consented.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
When I lighted my candles, he fell into meek transports with the room that was revealed to him; and when I heated the coffee in an unassuming block-tin vessel in which Mrs. Crupp delighted to prepare it (chiefly, I believe, because it was not intended for the purpose, being a shaving-pot, and because there was a patent invention of great price mouldering away in the pantry), he professed so much emotion, that I could joyfully have scalded him.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
