privacy

Noun

privacy (countable and uncountable, plural privacies)

1. (uncountable) 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...1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
2. (uncountable) Freedom from unwanted or undue disturbance of one's private life.
   • Those prying neighbours have robbed me of my sense of privacy.
3. (uncountable) Freedom from damaging publicity, public scrutiny, surveillance, and disclosure of personal information, usually by a government or a private organization.
   • Privacy is assumed by many to be among common-law rights.
   • Trixie Channing: Good God. Is there no privacy?
     DCI Tom Barnaby: No, not in a murder case.1998 May 6, Douglas Watkinson et al., “Death in Disguise”, in Midsomer Murders
4. (countable, obsolete) A place of seclusion.
5. (obsolete) A relationship between parties seen as being a result of their mutual interest or participation in a given transaction, contract etc.

   Synonyms:

   privity

6. (obsolete) Secrecy.
7. (countable, obsolete) A 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: […]1680, John Dryden, “The Preface to Ovid’s Epistles”, in Ovid, Ovid’s Epistles, […], London: […] Jacob Tonson […], →OCLC

   Synonyms:

   secret