privacy

From private +‎ -cy.

• (UK) enPR: prĭ'və-sē, IPA^(key): /ˈpɹɪv.ə.si/, /ˈpɹaɪ.və.si/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (General American) enPR: prī'və-sē, IPA^(key): /ˈpɹaɪ.və.si/

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.

   • 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     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 disposed to accord either.

   • 1944 November and December, “"Duplex Roomette" Sleeping Cars”, in Railway Magazine, page 324:

     It is realised that the old Pullman standard sleeper, with its convertible "sections", each containing upper and lower berths, and with no greater privacy at night than the curtains drawn along both sides of a middle aisle, has had its day.

2. (uncountable) Freedom from unwanted or undue disturbance of one's private life.

   It takes a village to rob one of a 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.

4. (countable, obsolete) A place of seclusion.
5. (obsolete, law) A relationship between parties seen as being a result of their mutual interest or participation in a given transaction, contract etc.

   Synonym: privity

6. (obsolete) Secrecy.
7. (countable, obsolete) A private matter.

   Synonym: secret

   • 1680, John Dryden, “The Preface to Ovid’s Epistles”, in Ovid, Ovid’s Epistles, […], London: […] Jacob Tonson […], →OCLC:

     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: […]

• private

• mind one's own business

• “privacy”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “privacy”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

Borrowed from English privacy.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpraːi̯.vəˌsi/, /ˈprɑi̯.vəˌsi/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: pri‧va‧cy

privacy f (uncountable)

1. privacy

Unadapted borrowing from English privacy.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpraj.va.si/, (careful style) /ˈpri.va.si/^[1][2]
• Rhymes: -ajvasi, (careful style) -ivasi

privacy f (invariable)

1. privacy (especially online)