Profess

1. v. i. To declare friendship.
2. v. t. To make open declaration of, as of one’s knowledge, belief, action, etc.; to avow or acknowledge; to confess publicly; to own or admit freely.
3. v. t. To set up a claim to; to make presence to; hence, to put on or present an appearance of.
4. v. t. To present to knowledge of, to proclaim one’s self versed in; to make one’s self a teacher or practitioner of, to set up as an authority respecting; to declare (one’s self to be such); as, he professes surgery; to profess one’s self a physician.
5. v. i. To take a profession upon one’s self by a public declaration; to confess.

The word meanings were obtained from OPTED(The Online Plain Text English Dictionary), which is based on “The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” which is in turn based on the 1913 US Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (See Project Gutenburg), as a text file.