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fess

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To admit to something; confess, often used with up:
  • noun A wide horizontal band forming the middle section of an escutcheon.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See fesse.
  • noun A cap of cloth or felt, often embroidered, made in Russia, near the Black Sea.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Her.) A band drawn horizontally across the center of an escutcheon, and containing in breadth the third part of it; one of the nine honorable ordinaries.
  • noun (Her.) the exact center of the escutcheon. See Escutcheon.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To confess; to admit.
  • noun heraldry A horizontal band across the middle of the shield.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun (heraldry) an ordinary consisting of a broad horizontal band across a shield

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Short for confess.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English fesse, from Old French, from Latin fascia, band.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French fesse, an alteration of faisse, from Latin fascia

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From confess, by shortening

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Examples

  • Truth & Reconciliation: The Israeli neo-cons need to 'fess up! yahooBuzzArticleHeadline =' Truth & Reconciliation: The Israeli neo-cons need to \'fess up! '

    Truth & Reconciliation: The Israeli neo-cons need to 'fess up! 2007

  • Call them collectors, in other words - even though it's not a moniker they fess up to.

    The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed JAMES ADAMS 2011

  • Another modern coat which may provoke a groan is that granted in 1977 to Dr. Claude Bursill, which includes three burrs, or teasels, and the heraldic ordinary known as a fess, which resembles a horizontal slab or sill.

    VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol XIII No 1 1986

  • If you give them the right information, you kind of fess up, chances are that you can get out of this by paying a fine and paying your back-taxes.

    CNN Transcript Apr 15, 2008 2008

  • Just another trivia point: when the stripe is horizontal, it's called a "fess".

    flags 2005

  • Won't you make it easy to "'fess" so I may be happy again?

    Letters of a Woman Homesteader Elinore Pruitt Stewart

  • ME at Nice, Monte Carlo, Chantilly -- bow to the p'fess'r; he's RIGHT!

    The Guest of Quesnay Booth Tarkington 1907

  • He had passed brilliantly in engineering; had been saved by his prompt and ready answers the consequences of a "fess" with clean black-board in ordnance and gunnery; had won a ringing, though involuntary, round of applause from the crowded galleries of the riding-hall by daring horsemanship, and he was now within seven days of the prized diploma and his commission.

    Starlight Ranch and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier Charles King 1888

  • You are going to 'fess' cos of the pain in your little hearts.

    Girls of the Forest L. T. Meade 1884

  • It did set the stomach right, but the conscience still worried her, for she could not make up her mind to 'fess' the sly, greedy thing she had done.

    Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag Louisa May Alcott 1860

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