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Privy   /prˈɪvi/   Listen
adjective
Privy  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to some person exclusively; assigned to private uses; not public; private; as, the privy purse. " Privee knights and squires."
2.
Secret; clandestine. " A privee thief."
3.
Appropriated to retirement; private; not open to the public. " Privy chambers."
4.
Admitted to knowledge of a secret transaction; secretly cognizant; privately knowing. "His wife also being privy to it." "Myself am one made privy to the plot."
Privy chamber, a private apartment in a royal residence. (Eng.)
Privy council (Eng. Law), the principal council of the sovereign, composed of the cabinet ministers and other persons chosen by the king or queen.
Privy councilor, a member of the privy council.
Privy purse, moneys set apart for the personal use of the monarch; also, the title of the person having charge of these moneys. (Eng.)
Privy seal or Privy signet, the seal which the king uses in grants, etc., which are to pass the great seal, or which he uses in matters of subordinate consequence which do not require the great seal; also, elliptically, the principal secretary of state, or person intrusted with the privy seal. (Eng.)
Privy verdict, a verdict given privily to the judge out of court; now disused.



noun
Privy  n.  (pl. privies)  
1.
(Law) A partaker; a person having an interest in any action or thing; one who has an interest in an estate created by another; a person having an interest derived from a contract or conveyance to which he is not himself a party. The term, in its proper sense, is distinguished from party.
2.
A necessary house or place for performing excretory functions in private; an outhouse; a backhouse.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Privy" Quotes from Famous Books



... article on Dr. NARE's Memoirs of Lord Burleigh, he would doubtless by careful enumeration have been able to show that from first to last Don Quixote had more ribs broken than any man has actually possessed since ADAM was privy to a diminution of their original number. He seems also to have had a perpetual renewal of teeth, keeping pace with their frequent removal by brute force. As for the number of legs and arms he had fractured, MACAULAY's Schoolboy would have ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various

... voice of Germany prevail on him to return; nay, could we but so much as elucidate for ourselves by what mystery he went away! But, alas, old Lieschen experiences or affects the profoundest deafness, the profoundest ignorance: in the Wahngasse all lies swept, silent, sealed up; the Privy Council itself can hitherto ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... excommunication, which had been transmitted to the Edinburgh Presbytery, was pronounced by John Davidson, minister of Liberton, and read in most of the pulpits in Edinburgh and Glasgow on the following Sabbath. A meeting of the Privy Council was immediately called, in which proceedings were taken against the ministers of Edinburgh, and John Durie was ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison

... Sir William Temple had it, saw the writing of many books. Sir William Temple himself, deeply hurt with his sovereign, James II, for striking his name off the Privy Council, had vowed to give up diplomacy and turn to gardening and writing for the rest of his life. His gardening may have been as good as his writing, and his essay on Gardening is, of all his writings, perhaps the best. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... naturally sociable. But this thou must do, not scoffingly, not by way of exprobation, but tenderly without any harshness of words. Neither must thou do it by way of exercise, or ostentation, that they that are by and hear thee, may admire thee: but so always that nobody be privy to it, but himself alone: yea, though there be more present at the same time. These nine particular heads, as so many gifts from the Muses, see that thou remember well: and begin one day, whilest thou art yet alive, to be a man indeed. ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius


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