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Learn vs Profess - What's the difference?

learn | profess |

As verbs the difference between learn and profess

is that learn is to acquire, or attempt to acquire knowledge or an ability to do something or learn can be while profess is to administer the vows of a religious order to (someone); to admit to a religious order (chiefly in passive).

learn

English

Etymology 1

From (etyl) lernen, from (etyl) . Compare (etyl) lernen.

Verb

  • To acquire, or attempt to acquire knowledge or an ability to do something.
  • To attend a course or other educational activity.
  • * 1719 ,
  • For, as he took delight to introduce me, I took delight to learn.
  • To gain knowledge from a bad experience.
  • learn from one's mistakes
  • To be studying.
  • To come to know; to become informed of; to find out.
  • He just learned that he will be sacked.
    Usage notes
    * See other, dated and regional, sense of below.
    Synonyms
    * (l)
    Antonyms
    * (l) * (l)
    Derived terms
    * (l) * (l)

    Etymology 2

    From (etyl) . Compare Dutch leren, German (m).

    Verb

  • *:
  • *:And whan she had serched hym / she fond in the bottome of his wound that therin was poyson / And soo she heled hym/ and therfore Tramtrist cast grete loue to la beale Isoud / for she was at that tyme the fairest mayde and lady of the worlde / And there Tramtryst lerned her to harpe / and she beganne to haue grete fantasye vnto hym
  • *1599 , (William Shakespeare), (Much Ado About Nothing) ,
  • *:Sweet prince, you learn me noble thankfulness.
  • *circa 1611 , (William Shakespeare), (Cymbeline), :
  • *:Have I not been / Thy pupil long? Hast thou not learn’d me how / To make perfumes?
  • *1993 , The Simpsons , (18 Feb. 1993) Lisa's thoughts:
  • *:That'll learn him to bust my tomater.
  • Usage notes
    Now often considered non-standard.
    Derived terms
    * (l)

    References

    * * * Family Word Finder Readers Digest Association Inc. NY 1975

    profess

    English

    Verb

    (es)
  • To administer the vows of a religious order to (someone); to admit to a religious order. (Chiefly in passive.)
  • * 2000 , Butler's Lives of the Saints , p.118:
  • This swayed the balance decisively in Mary's favour, and she was professed on 8 September 1578.
  • (reflexive) To declare oneself (to be something).
  • * 2011 , Alex Needham, The Guardian , 9 Dec.:
  • Kiefer professes himself amused by the fuss that ensued when he announced that he was buying the Mülheim-Kärlich reactor.
  • (ambitransitive) To declare; to assert, affirm.
  • * c. 1604 , (William Shakespeare), Measure for Measure , First Folio 1623:
  • He professes to haue receiued no sinister measure from his Iudge, but most willingly humbles himselfe to the determination of Iustice.
  • * Milton
  • The best and wisest of them all professed / To know this only, that he nothing knew.
  • * 1974 , ‘The Kansas Kickbacks’, Time , 11 Feb 1974:
  • The Governor immediately professed that he knew nothing about the incident.
  • *{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-07, author=(Gary Younge)
  • , volume=188, issue=26, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Hypocrisy lies at heart of Manning prosecution , passage=WikiLeaks did not cause these uprisings but it certainly informed them. The dispatches revealed details of corruption and kleptocracy that many Tunisians suspected,
  • To make a claim (to be something), to lay claim to (a given quality, feeling etc.), often with connotations of insincerity.
  • * 2010 , Hélène Mulholland, The Guardian , 28 Sep 2010:
  • Ed Miliband professed ignorance of the comment when he was approached by the BBC later.
  • To declare one's adherence to (a religion, deity, principle etc.).
  • * 1983 , Alexander Mcleish, The Frontier Peoples of India , Mittal Publications 1984, p.122:
  • The remainder of the population, about two-thirds, belongs to the Mongolian race and professes Buddhism.
  • To work as a professor of; to teach.
  • *, II.12:
  • *:he was a Spaniard, who about two hundred yeeres since professed Physicke in Tholouse .