profess

Etymology

From Old French professer, and its source, the participle stem of Latin profitērī, from pro- + fatērī (“to confess, acknowledge”).

verb

1. (transitive, chiefly passive) To administer the vows of a religious order to (someone); to admit to a religious order.
   This swayed the balance decisively in Mary's favour, and she was professed on 8 September 1578. 2000, Butler's Lives of the Saints, page 118
2. (reflexive) To declare oneself (to be something).
   Kiefer professes himself amused by the fuss that ensued when he announced that he was buying the Mülheim-Kärlich reactor[…]. 2011-12-09, Alex Needham, “Anselm Kiefer: ‘Art is difficult, it's not entertainment’”, in The Guardian
3. (transitive, intransitive) To declare; to assert, affirm.
   The Governor immediately professed that he knew nothing about the incident. 11 Feb 1974, “The Kansas Kickbacks”, in Time
   WikiLeaks did not cause these uprisings but it certainly informed them. The dispatches revealed details of corruption and kleptocracy that many Tunisians suspected,[…]. They also exposed the blatant discrepancy between the west's professed values and actual foreign policies. 2013-06-07, Gary Younge, “Hypocrisy lies at heart of Manning prosecution”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 18
4. (transitive) To make a claim (to be something); to lay claim to (a given quality, feeling etc.), often with connotations of insincerity.
   Ed Miliband professed ignorance of the comment when he was approached by the BBC later. 2010-09-28, Hélène Mulholland, “David Miliband voices displeasure during Labour leader's speech”, in The Guardian
   Caution needs to be exercised in regards to claims of coinage as the data contained a number of examples of writers professing the invention of a term that had actually been in existence for many years. 2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 13
5. (transitive) To declare one's adherence to (a religion, deity, principle etc.).
   [N]ow ſuch a liue vngodly, vvithout a care of doing the wil of the Lord (though they profeſſe him in their mouths, yea though they beleeue and acknowledge all the Articles of the Creed, yea haue knowledge of the Scripturs) yet if they liue vngodly, they deny God, and therefore ſhal be denied, […] 1604, Jeremy Corderoy, A Short Dialogve, wherein is Proved, that No Man can be Saved without Good VVorkes, 2nd edition, Oxford: Printed by Ioseph Barnes, and are to be sold in Paules Church-yard at the signe of the Crowne, by Simon Waterson, →OCLC, page 40
   The remainder of the population, about two-thirds, belongs to the Mongolian race and professes Buddhism. 1983, Alexander Mcleish, The Frontier Peoples of India, Mittal Publications, published 1984, page 122
6. (transitive) To work as a professor of; to teach.
7. (transitive, now rare) To claim to have knowledge or understanding of (a given area of interest, subject matter).