profession

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. An occupation or career: "One of the highest compliments a child can pay a parent is to choose his or her profession” ( Joan Nathan).
2. n. An occupation, such as law, medicine, or engineering, that requires considerable training and specialized study.
3. n. The body of qualified persons in an occupation or field: members of the teaching profession.
4. n. An act or instance of professing; a declaration.
5. n. An avowal of faith or belief.
6. n. A faith or belief: believers of various professions.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of professing; open declaration; public avowal or acknowledgment of one's sentiments or belief.
2. n. That which is professed; a declaration; a representation or protestation; pretense; specifically, an open and formal avowal of Christian faith and purpose.
3. n. The calling or occupation which one professes to understand and to follow; vocation; specifically, a vocation in which a professed knowledge of some department of science or learning is used by its practical application to affairs of others, either in advising, guiding, or teaching them, or in serving their interests or welfare in the practice of an art founded on it. Formerly theology, law, and medicine were specifically known as the professions; but, as the applications of science and learning are extended to other departments of affairs, other vocations also receive the name. The word implies professed attainments in special knowledge, as distinguished from mere skill; a practical dealing with affairs, as distinguished from mere study or investigation; and an application of such knowledge to uses for others as a vocation, as distinguished from its pursuit for one's own purposes. In professions strictly so called a preliminary examination as to qualifications is usually demanded by law or usage, and a license or other official authority founded thereon required. In law the significance of the word has been contested under statutes imposing taxes on persons pursuing any “occupation, trade, or profession,” and under statutes authorizing arrest in civil actions for misconduct in a “professional employment”; and it has been, in the former use, held clearly to include the vocation of an attorney, and upon the same principle would doubtless include physicians, unless the mention of trade, etc., in the same clause of the statute be ground for interpreting the statute as relating only to business vocations. Professional employment, in statutes allowing arrest, is regarded as not including a private agency like that of a factor or a real-estate broker, which can be taken up and laid down at pleasure.
4. n. The collective body of persons engaged in a calling: as, practices disgraceful to the profession; to be at the head of one's profession.
5. n. The act by which a novice enters into a religious order and takes its vows. In the Roman Catholic Church he or she must be at least sixteen years of age and must have completed a year of probation.
6. n. Character; nature.
7. n. Synonyms Vocation, Business, etc. See occupation.

Wiktionary

1. n. A promise or vow made on entering a religious order.
2. n. A declaration of belief, faith or of one's opinion.
3. n. An occupation, trade, craft, or activity in which one has a professed expertise in a particular area; a job, especially one requiring a high level of skill or training.
4. n. The practitioners of such an occupation collectively.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of professing or claiming; open declaration; public avowal or acknowledgment
2. n. That which one professed; a declaration; an avowal; a claim.
3. n. That of which one professed knowledge; the occupation, if not mechanical, agricultural, or the like, to which one devotes one's self; the business which one professes to understand, and to follow for subsistence; calling; vocation; employment.
4. n. The collective body of persons engaged in a calling.
5. n. (Eccl. Law.) The act of entering, or becoming a member of, a religious order.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the body of people in a learned occupation
2. n. an open avowal (true or false) of some belief or opinion
3. n. affirmation of acceptance of some religion or faith
4. n. an occupation requiring special education (especially in the liberal arts or sciences)