secrete

/sɪˈkɹiːt/

secrete adjective: separated; discrete. Also the archaic form of secret.

Adjective

secrete (not comparable)

(obsolete, rare) Separated; discrete.
- […] they ſuppoſing Two other Divine Hypoſtaſes Superiour thereunto, which were perfectly Secrete from Matter.
  […]
  This ſo containeth all things, as not being yet ſecrete and diſtinct; whereas in the Second they are diſcerned and diſtinguiſhed by Reaſon; that is, they are Actually diſtinguiſhed in...1678: Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, book 1, chapter 4, pages 307 and 582

Verb (1)

secrete (third-person singular simple present secretes, present participle secreting, simple past and past participle secreted)

(transitive, usually, glands) To extract a substance from blood, sap, or similar to produce and emit waste for excretion or for the fulfilling of a physiological function.
- Why one set of cells should secrete bile, another urea, and so on, we do not know.1842, William Benjamin Carpenter, Principles of Human Physiology
- Many tumors secrete two or more different hormones.2008, Stephen J. McPhee, Maxine A. Papadakis, et al., Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment, McGraw-Hill Medical, page 1202
Synonyms:

secern
(figuratively, transitive) To exude or yield.
- If you won’t believe my great new doctrine (which, by the bye, is as old as the Greeks), that souls secrete their bodies, as snails do shells, you will remain in outer darkness.1863: Charles Kingsley (author), Frances Elizabeth Kingsley (editor), Charles Kingsley, his Letters and Memories of his Life (first published posthumously in 1877), page 156 (8th edition: 1880)
- Let me not be misunderstood. I see as clearly as any man possibly can, and rate as highly, the value of wealth, and of hereditary wealth, as the security of refinement, the feeder of all those arts that ennoble and beautify life, and as making a country worth living in. Many an ancestral hall here...1887, James Russell Lowell, Democracy and Other Addresses, published 1892, page 15

Verb (2)

secrete (third-person singular simple present secretes, present participle secreting, simple past and past participle secreted)

(transitive) To conceal.
- With those words the passenger opened the coach-door and got in; not at all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who had expeditiously secreted their watches and purses in their boots, and were now making a general pretence of being asleep.1859, Charles Dickens, chapter II, in A Tale of Two Cities, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC
- Plaintiffs filed an affidavit for an attachment, alleging that defendant was about to assign, secrete, and dispose of his property with intent to delay and defraud his creditors, and was about to convert his property into money to place it beyond the reach of his creditors.1914, The Pacific Reporter, volume 142, West Publishing Company, page 450

Also used as

secrete is also the archaic form of secret.

secrete meaning in Hindi, Telugu, Arabic and Persian

secrete in Hindi

(''transitive'') produce by secretion: स्राव srāv

secrete in Telugu

(''transitive'') produce by secretion: స్రవించు sraviñcu

secrete in Arabic

(''transitive'') produce by secretion: أَفْرَزَ ʔafraza

secrete in Persian

(''transitive'') produce by secretion: ترشح کردن taraššoh kardan

More languagesFewer languages

secrete in Vietnamese: tiết

Examples of secrete in a sentence

Families secreted mad uncles and strange cousins in asylums.1997, Chris Horrocks, Introducing Foucault, Totem Books, Icon Books, →ISBN, page 43:
Under s. 98 of the Customs Act, a customs officer may search a traveller provided the officer suspects on reasonable grounds that contraband has been "secreted on or about his person...".1999, “R. v. Monney”, in Supreme Court Judgments, Supreme Court of Canada:

All 17 example sentences with secrete

Synonyms of secrete

secern

Forms of secrete

Verb
third-person singular present	secretes
present participle	secreting
past participle	secreted
past	secreted
Adjective
comparative	more secrete
superlative	most secrete

Past tense of secrete: secreted

Origin of secrete

First attested in 1678: from Latin sēcrētus (“[having been] separated”).

First directly attested in 1728; attested as the past-participial adjective secreted in 1707: from Latin sēcrētus, perfect passive participle of sēcernō (“to separate”); reinforced by back-formation from secretion; compare secern; cognate with French sécréter and the Spanish secretar.

Alteration of secret.

Words formed from secrete

Words that rhyme with secrete

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about secrete

What does secrete mean?: Secrete means separated; discrete.
What is secrete in Hindi?: Secrete in Hindi is स्राव (srāv). See Secrete meaning in Hindi.
How do you use secrete in a sentence?: Families secreted mad uncles and strange cousins in asylums.
What part of speech is secrete?: Secrete can be an adjective or a verb.
How do you pronounce secrete?: Secrete is pronounced /sɪˈkɹiːt/.

Words near secrete in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: secrete (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-secrete.ogg.

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