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Earlier form of Acknow. [Obs.] To be aknow, to acknowledge; to confess. [Obs.]

One who confesses a felony committed and accuses his accomplices. Blount. Burrill.

a confession of guilt by a prisoner charged with treason or felony, together with an accusation of his accomplish and a giving evidence against them in order to obtain his own pardon. The term is no longer in use; it corresponded to what is now known as turning king's (or queen's) evidence in England, and state's evide…

One who confesses a crime and accuses another. See 1st Approvement, 2.

Of or pertaining to the aspen, or resembling it; made of aspen wood. Nor aspen leaves confess the gentlest breeze. Gay.

posed to mildness. "Asperity of character." Landor. It is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received. Johnson.

ng to Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria in the 4th century. Athanasian creed, a formulary, confession, or exposition of faith, formerly supposed to have been drawn up by Athanasius; but this opinion is now rejected, and the composition is ascribed by some to Hilary, bishop of Arles (5th century). It is a summary of what…

re, and that of Queen Anne (b. 1664) the Augustan age of English literature. -- Augustan confession (Eccl. Hist.), or confession of Augsburg, drawn up at Augusta Vindelicorum, or Augsburg, by Luther and Melanchthon, in 1530, contains the principles of the Protestants, and their reasons for separating from the Roman Ca…

Told in the ear, i. e., told privately; as, auricular confession to the priest. This next chapter is a penitent confession of the king, and the strangest . . . that ever was auricular. Milton.

e; to invalidate. Thus, in a replication, the plaintiff may deny the defendant's plea, or confess it, and avoid it by stating new matter. Blackstone.

To acknowledge deliberately; to admit; to confess; to sanction. Thou hast avouched the Lord this day to be thy God. Deut. xxvi. 17.

To confess; to acknowledge. [Obs.] Chaucer.

In a blushing manner; with a blush or blushes; as, to answer or confess blushingly.

An instrument of torture for the leg, formerly used to extort confessions, particularly in Scotland. So he was put to the torture, which in Scotland they call the boots; for they put a pair of iron boots close on the leg, and drive wedges between them and the leg. Bp. Burnet.

a. -- To make a clean breast, to disclose the secrets which weigh upon one; to make full confession.

e apartment, as in a prison or in a monastery or convent; the hut of a hermit. The heroic confessor in his cell. Macaulay.

An acknowledgment of a fine of lands and tenements or confession of a thing done. [Eng.]

One who confesses his sins and faults. [Obs.]

A form of prayer in which public confession of sins is made.

ed to a religious life; a body of monks or nuns. One of our convent, and his [the duke's] confessor. Shak.