fess up

• 'fess up (with preceding apostrophe)

Aphetic form of confess up.

fess up (third-person singular simple present fesses up, present participle fessing up, simple past and past participle fessed up)

1. (intransitive, slang) To confess to something; to admit something.
   • 1918, Rex Ellingwood Beach, chapter 26, in The Winds of Chance:

     "‛Fess up," she persisted. "Have you boys been quarreling again?"

   • 2008, Barack Obama, "Barack Obama's president-elect press conference - 18 December 2008":

     And you know, one of the things that I hope is that the American people will find when we make a mistake, we're willing to fess up to it and change.

   • 2009 February 26, Roy Furchgott, “You’ve Sold Your Stocks. Now What?”, in New York Times‎:

     “I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was happening in the financial industry, and I came to the conclusion that people weren’t fessing up,” he said.