confessional

CEFRB2

/kənˈfɛʃənəl/

adjective · noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

Examples

At a glance

Sits at B2 on the CEFR scale

Also pronounced

Deep Dive

Extra meanings

A small room where confession—the Sacrament of Penance—is performed in private with a priest.
Officially practicing a particular shared religion, as a state or organization; see confessionalism (sense 1).
In the manner or style of a confession.

In context

confessional community
The confessional's chief amusement has been seduction–in all the ages of the Church.
The studied reticence of the poems in quatrains is opposed to the more confessional aspects of the monologue.

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The word in print, with each source given in full.

The studied reticence of the poems in quatrains is opposed to the more confessional aspects of the monologue.
1991, Manju Jain, A critical reading of the selected poems of T.S. Eliot, page 77
The confessional's chief amusement has been seduction–in all the ages of the Church.
c. 1909, Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth, Letter XI
In one of the aisles there was an elaborately carved confessional box and I recognised the village priest in his heavy mountain boots and black cassock as he entered it and drew the dark velvet curtains behind him.
1956, Delano Ames, chapter 13, in Crime out of Mind
When a 35-year-old Bill Clinton, famously the nation’s youngest former governor, set out in 1982 to reclaim the job he had lost two years earlier, he began with a remarkable televised confessional. “My daddy never had to whip me twice for the same thing,” Mr. Clinton told Arkansans in a campaign commercial, acknowledging voters’ anger over his having raised a hated vehicle fee and vowing to listen better if they gave him another chance as governor.
2015 April 15, Jonathan Martin, “For a Clinton, It’s Not Hard to Be Humble in an Effort to Regain Power”, in The New York Times
These characters behave as crassly as they do in large part because producers of shows such as The Bachelor deprive them of all contact with the outside world ([…]) and ply them with alcohol, then goad them to unleash their petty grievances in filmed "confessionals".
2004, Ms. Magazine, volume 14

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From confession + -al.