privity

English

Etymology

From Anglo-Norman priveté, privitee et al., Old French priveté, from privé + -té.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈpɹɪvɪti/

Noun

privity (countable and uncountable, plural privities)

  1. (obsolete) A divine mystery; something known only to God, or revealed only in holy scriptures. [12th–16th c.]
    • 1357, John Mandeville, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville‎[1]:
      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.
  2. (now rare, archaic) Privacy, secrecy. [from 13th c.]
  3. (obsolete) A private matter, a secret. [14th–17th c.]
  4. (archaic, in the plural) The genitals. [from 14th c.]
  5. (law) A relationship between parties seen as being a result of their mutual interest or participation in a given transaction, e.g. contract, estate, etc. [from 16th c.]
    • 1870, Lysander Spooner, No Treason, Number 6, page 32:
      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.
  6. The fact of being privy to something; knowledge, compliance. [from 16th c.]
    • 1751, [Tobias] Smollett, chapter 14, in The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume I, London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC:
      But this acknowledgement was made without the privity of his wife, whose vicious aversion he was obliged, in appearance, to adopt.
    • 1852, Herman Melville, Pierre; or The Ambiguities:
      This episode in her life, above all other things, was most cruelly suggestive to him, as possibly involving his father in the privity to a thing, at which Pierre’s inmost soul fainted with amazement and abhorrence.

Derived terms

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