confessional
/kənˈfɛʃ(ə)n(ə)l
/noun
1An enclosed stall in a church divided by a screen or curtain in which a priest sits to hear confessions: the secrets of the confessional...
- And there were a good many other sequences planned for the picture which are not there, including her visit to a confessional in the Catholic church - without words, nothing was ever said.
- ‘I came here for meaning,’ Gavin says to the priest in the confessional.
- The priest will then assign a ‘penance’, which usually consists of a few prayers to say in the church after leaving the confessional.
2An acknowledgement that one has done something shameful or embarrassing; a confession: tabloid confessionals...
- His lyrics read like tabloid confessionals, offering glimpses into a celebrity's life.
- In these days of tabloid confessionals and celebrity magazines, the sound of rock stars complaining about their lot has become a familiar one.
- It seals its fate with private camera confessionals, team challenges, and the mandatory hot tub (why must there always be a hot tub?).
adjective
1(Of speech or writing) in which a person reveals private thoughts or admits to past incidents, especially ones about which they feel ashamed or embarrassed: the autobiography is remarkably confessional his confessional outpourings...
- Anyhow, it's not a surprise that so many of the examples of this kind are in confessional writing about relationship problems.
- By confusing the public and the private, today's confessional culture undermines the idea of the ‘public interest’.
- And the evidence of that confession, or confessional statement, was admitted without objection?
1.1Relating to religious confession: the priest leaned forward in his best confessional manner...
- With great scholarly skill, he shows how centuries-old Orthodox religious philosophy and rituals resembled the penitent, confessional modes employed in the Soviet era.
- Usually once the ‘penitent’, that is, the person going to confession, closes the confessional door, he or she kneels down on a kneeler, or in the case of someone who is elderly or has another reason for doing so, he or she sits down.
- But I did not know until later that our Baptist forefathers had found that wonderful document to be a helpful guide in formulating our early confessional statements.
2Relating to confessions of faith or doctrinal systems: the confessional approach to religious education...
- When theological professors and pastors abandon the biblical and confessional doctrine of justification, they sacrifice the gospel and the souls of men.
- He was an unashamed confessional Calvinist in an age of doctrinal indifferentism.
- Christian doctrine identifies the rules by which Christians use confessional language to define the social world that they indwell.
Derivatives
confessionally
- I am not writing therapeutically or confessionally.
- The failure to implement policies intended to undermine confessionally based political power have curtailed that hope.
- The shift to resistance theory was confessionally driven and was a ‘British’ and French Huguenot development.
Origin
Late Middle English (as an adjective): the adjective from confession + -al; the noun via French from Italian confessionale, from medieval Latin, neuter of confessionalis, from Latin confessio(n-), from confiteri 'acknowledge' (see confess).