Word.ws English Dictionary

secret society

secret society noun: a club, fraternal organization, or other association which admits only selected individuals as members, whose meetings and practices are often ritualistic and not public, and which often has the purpose of furthering the social or economic opportunities of its members.

Noun

secret society (plural secret societies)

  1. A club, fraternal organization, or other association which admits only selected individuals as members, whose meetings and practices are often ritualistic and not public, and which often has the purpose of furthering the social or economic opportunities of its members.
    • Ben had much fun out of it, assuring the other boys that those were the signs and password of a secret society to which he and Sam belonged.1879, Louisa May Alcott, chapter 22, in Under the Lilacs
    • But these Brothers of Pity were a secret society, known to no man except their spiritual head, who chose them in turn, and not knowing even each other.1903, Joseph Conrad, chapter 6, in Romance
  2. (Singapore) A criminal gang.
    • […] obedience and loyalty were also 'important bywords' to the Ghee Hin, Ghee Hok and Ho Seng secret societies […]2023, Narayanan Ganapathy, Gangs and Minorities in Singapore: Masculinity, Marginalization and Resistance, Bristol University Press, →ISBN

secret society meaning in Thai

secret society in Thai

organization
อั้งยี่ âng-yîi

Forms of secret society

pluralsecret societies

Questions about secret society

What does secret society mean?
Secret society means a club, fraternal organization, or other association which admits only selected individuals as members, whose meetings and practices are often ritualistic and not public, and which often has the purpose of furthering the social or economic opportunities of its members.
What is secret society in Thai?
Secret society in Thai is อั้งยี่ (âng-yîi). See Secret society meaning in Thai.
What part of speech is secret society?
Secret society is a noun.
What is the plural of secret society?
The plural of secret society is secret societies.

Words near secret society in the dictionary

  1. secret services
  2. secret sharing
  3. secret shopper
  4. secret shoppers
  5. secret societies
  6. secret society
  7. secret sock
  8. secret socks
  9. secret squirrel
  10. secret squirrels
  11. secret vice

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: secret society (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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