Word.ws English Dictionary

privities

privities is the plural of privity.

Meaning of privity

Noun

privity (countable and uncountable, plural privities)

  1. (obsolete) A divine mystery; something known only to God, or revealed only in holy scriptures.
    • But yet there is a place that men clepe the school of God, where he was wont to teach his disciples, and told them the privities of heaven.1357, John Mandeville, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
  2. (archaic) Privacy, secrecy.
    • Him oft and oft I askt in priuitie, / Of what loines and what lignage I did spring[…].1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
  3. (obsolete) A private matter, a secret.
  4. (archaic, in plural) The genitals.
    • Having ended the delights of nature, they were wont to wipe their privities [translating catze] with perfumed wooll.1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 49, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book I, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
  5. A relationship between parties seen as being a result of their mutual interest or participation in a given transaction, e.g. contract, estate, etc.
    • There is no privity, (as the lawyers say),—that is, no mutual recognition, consent and agreement—between those who take these oaths, and any other persons.1870, Lysander Spooner, No Treason, Number 6, page 32
  6. The fact of being privy to something; knowledge, compliance.
    • But this acknowledgement was made without the privity of his wife, whose vicious aversion he was obliged, in appearance, to adopt.1751, [Tobias] Smollett, chapter 14, in The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume I, London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC

Noun

privities pl (plural only)

  1. (archaic, plural, plural-only) The genitals.

Questions about privities

What does privities mean?
Privities means the genitals.
What is privities the plural of?
Privities is the plural of privity.
What part of speech is privities?
Privities is a noun.

Words near privities in the dictionary

  1. privished
  2. privishes
  3. privishing
  4. Privitera
  5. Priviteras
  6. privities
  7. privity
  8. Privlaka
  9. Privott
  10. Privotts
  11. privs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: privities (page history and authors); privity (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “privities.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/privities. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.