privacy

noun

1. 1

   The state of being secluded from the presence, sight, or knowledge of others.

   I need my privacy, so please stay out of my room.

   Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers,[…]. Even such a boat as the Mount Vernon offered a total deck space so cramped as to leave secrecy or privacy well out of the question, even had the motley and democratic assemblage of passengers been disposed to accord either.

   It is realised that the old Pullman standard sleeper, with its convertible "sections", each containing upper and lower berths, and with no greater privacy at night than the curtains drawn along both sides of a middle aisle, has had its day.

2. 2

   Freedom from unwanted or undue disturbance of one's private life.

   Those prying neighbours have robbed me of my sense of privacy.

3. 3

   Freedom from damaging publicity, public scrutiny, surveillance, and disclosure of personal information, usually by a government or a private organization.

   Trixie Channing: Good God. Is there no privacy? DCI Tom Barnaby: No, not in a murder case.

   Privacy is assumed by many to be among common-law rights.

4. 4

   obsoleteA place of seclusion.

5. 5

   obsoleteA relationship between parties seen as being a result of their mutual interest or participation in a given transaction, contract etc.

6. 6

   obsoleteSecrecy.

7. 7

   obsoleteA private matter.

   It ſeems more probable that Ovid vvas either the Confident of ſome other paſſion, or that he had ſtumbled by ſome inadvertency, upon the privacies of Livia, and ſeen her in a Bath: […]

Forms

plural

privacies