Other forms: privates
Private means for one person or group only, and not for everyone else. A private conversation, private property, a private room.
It has a second sense that trips learners in Britain: private means not run by the state. A private school is fee-paying, private healthcare is paid for, the private sector is the part of the economy that is not government. That has nothing to do with secrecy, and confusing the two senses can make a sentence say the opposite of what was intended. As a noun, a private is the lowest rank in an army. In private is the fixed phrase for doing something where nobody can see.
1adjectiveprivateFor one person or group only.~21%
“It was a private conversation and you were not part of it.”
synonyms: personal, confidential
2adjectiverunNot run or paid for by the state.~64%
“She went private because the waiting list was two years.”
3adjectivekeepingOf a person, keeping their feelings to themselves.~2%
“He is a private man and always has been.”
4nounlowestThe lowest rank of soldier.~13%
“He joined as a private and left as a sergeant.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 23 sentences found in the wild and placed 23 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
private is a quality of restricted access.
Latin privatus meant set apart from public life — the past participle of privare, to deprive. A private citizen was one deprived of office, which is why private, deprive and privilege, a private law, all come from the same word.
Proto-Indo-European
*per
Latin
prīvātus — bereaved, deprived, set apart from, release
Middle English
privat — individual, exclusive, private
English, today
private
Built from
From Middle English privat (“individual, exclusive, private”), from Latin prīvātus (“bereaved, deprived, set apart from, release”), perfect passive participle of prīvō (“to bereave, deprive, release”) (see -ate for more), from prīvus (“private, one's own, proper”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European per; compare prime, prior, pristine. a doublet of privy.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA