privity
/ˈpɹɪvɪti/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.66 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
3
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A divine mystery; something known only to God, or revealed only in holy scriptures.
Countable; Obsolete; Uncountable
noun
A relationship between parties seen as being a result of their mutual interest or participation in a given transaction, e.g. contract, estate, etc.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "Him oft and oft I askt in priuitie, / Of what loines and what lignage I did spring[…]."
- "Having ended the delights of nature, they were wont to wipe their privities [translating catze] with perfumed wooll."
- "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."
- "But this acknowledgement was made without the privity of his wife, whose vicious aversion he was obliged, in appearance, to adopt."
- "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."
Etymology
From Anglo-Norman priveté, privitee et al., Old French priveté, from privé + -té.
Usage
Inflected Forms
Phrases
horizontal privity
vertical privity