Meaning & use
profession
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Meanings
nouncountable
A career that needs long training and often a formal qualification, such as medicine, law or teaching.
Grammar: Countable: the legal profession, a profession.
Patterns
- enter a profession
- by profession
Teaching is a demanding profession that needs patience.
He is a lawyer by profession.
She chose a profession in nursing.
nounsingular
All the people who work in a particular occupation.
Grammar: Takes a singular or plural verb: the profession is changing.
Patterns
- the medical profession
The medical profession welcomed the new guidelines.
The legal profession has debated the change for years.
nouncountableformal
An open statement of a belief, feeling or faith.
Grammar: Often followed by of: a profession of loyalty.
Patterns
- a profession of faith
He made a profession of faith before the congregation.
Their professions of friendship sounded hollow.
Word forms
| plural | professions |
|---|
Common combinations
- enter a profession
- Many graduates hope to enter the teaching profession.
- the legal profession
- She has worked in the legal profession for twenty years.
- by profession
- He is an architect by profession.
- caring profession
- Nursing is a caring profession.
- choose a profession
- It is hard to choose a profession at eighteen.
Synonyms and how they differ
- occupation
- Occupation covers any kind of work, but profession suggests training and prestige.
- career
- Career emphasizes the path across a person's working life, while profession names the field itself.
- job
- Job is the casual word for paid work, and it does not suggest advanced qualifications.
- vocation
- Vocation suggests a calling felt strongly, rather than a field requiring training.
Opposites
Word family
- professional adjective
- relating to a profession or done skillfully
- professional noun
- a person who works in a profession
- professionalism noun
- skilled and responsible behavior at work
- professionally adverb
- in a skilled or work-related way
- professor noun
- a senior university teacher
Commonly confused: profession or profusion?
profession vs profusion
Profusion means a large amount of something, so it is unrelated to work or careers.
Practice
Medicine, law and engineering are examples of a ____ that requires years of training.
Choose one answer.
A profession needs specialist training. A hobby and a pastime are leisure activities, and an errand is a small task.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “profession”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.