Monday, 3 November 2014

How can you 'confess' to something which isn't a crime?

From The Daily Mail:

The research found for more than one in seven British people a single glass of wine in the evening is not enough - and they regularly polish off a whole bottle all by themselves.

A further one in three people admitted to drinking at home alone, with 15 per cent confessing to often emptying the bottle on their own...


You 'admit' that you turn up to work drunk and you 'confess' to a drink driving offence.

You don't do either of those for something which is entirely legal and doesn't do any harm to anybody. I don't even think that drinking one whole bottle over the course of an evening is excessive, it's only three or four decent sized glasses.

2 comments:

Bayard said...

I think it's different for Catholics. They would be confessing all their sins, sooner or later.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, whether something is a crime or a sin is defined differently by different groups.

So having a wank is (I think) a 'sin' under Catholic rules and something which you would 'confess'. But in the normal world, wanking is not a sin or a crime, so you wouldn't 'confess' to it.