Definition of "profession" []

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

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Let this be generally done, and teaching will soon be raised, in public estimation, to the rank of a learned profession; and the _fourth learned profession_ -- the vocation of the practical educator -- will be taken up for life by as great a proportion of men and women eminent for talent, cultivation, and moral worth, as either of the other three professions have ever been able to boast."
• "His mothers main profession is one of the major reasons Adrian decided to be different from the people around him."
• "But, since the profession is already much more bifurcated between litigators and non-litigators than formal statistics would suggest, I doubt it."