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Private   /prˈaɪvət/   Listen
adjective
Private  adj.  
1.
Belonging to, or concerning, an individual person, company, or interest; peculiar to one's self; unconnected with others; personal; one's own; not public; not general; separate; as, a man's private opinion; private property; a private purse; private expenses or interests; a private secretary.
2.
Sequestered from company or observation; appropriated to an individual; secret; secluded; lonely; solitary; as, a private room or apartment; private prayer. "Reason... then retires Into her private cell when nature rests."
3.
Not invested with, or engaged in, public office or employment; as, a private citizen; private life. "A private person may arrest a felon."
4.
Not publicly known; not open; secret; as, a private negotiation; a private understanding.
5.
Having secret or private knowledge; privy. (Obs.)
Private act or Private statute, a statute exclusively for the settlement of private and personal interests, of which courts do not take judicial notice; opposed to a general law, which operates on the whole community. In the United States Congress, similar private acts are referred to as private law and a general law as a public law.
Private nuisance or Private wrong. See Nuisance.
Private soldier. See Private, n., 5.
Private way, a right of private passage over another man's ground; also, a road on private land, contrasted with public road, which is on a public right of way.


noun
Private  n.  
1.
A secret message; a personal unofficial communication. (Obs.)
2.
Personal interest; particular business.(Obs.) "Nor must I be unmindful of my private."
3.
Privacy; retirement. (Archaic) "Go off; I discard you; let me enjoy my private."
4.
One not invested with a public office. (Archaic) "What have kings, that privates have not too?"
5.
(Mil.) A common soldier; a soldier below the grade of a noncommissioned officer.
6.
pl. The private parts; the genitals.
In private, secretly; not openly or publicly.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Private" Quotes from Famous Books



... not, however, get permission to absent myself from Paris for the time I might require till the end of last April. I had meanwhile sought all private means of ascertaining what Frenchmen of rank and station were in that capital in the autumn of 1849. Among the list of the very few such Messieurs I fixed upon one as the most likely to be the mysterious Achille—Achille was, indeed, his ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... time, were recalled to her remembrance. They might mean nothing, or they might mean much. In the latter case, Jacqueline could not understand them very well. But she knew he had called her "Clotilde," that he had even dared to say "thou" to her in private—these were things she knew of her own knowledge. Her pulse beat quicker as she thought of them; her head burned. In that studio, where she had passed so many happy hours, had Marien and her stepmother ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... he proposed to his master, very shortly, the assassination of Borgia by means of the lovely Molly. Let her, at a private banquet, inveigle him to ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... is that belt of his, which it has always been understood between us should be kept perfectly private on account of its value. It ought not to have been taken to Professor ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... do better than that! From the very start, now, we must nip off the evil bud that might later blossom into private property and wealth, exploitation and misery. There shall be no rich men in our world now and no slaves. No idlers and no oppressed. 'Service' must be our watchword, and our motto 'Each for all and all ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England


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