privacy

plural privacies

1. uncountableThe state of being secluded from the presence, sight, or knowledge of others.

   I need my privacy, so please stay out of my room.

   2 more examples

   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.

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

   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.

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

2. uncountableFreedom from unwanted or undue disturbance of one's private life.

   Those prying neighbours have robbed me of my sense of privacy.

3. uncountableFreedom 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.

   1 more example

   Trixie Channing: Good God. Is there no privacy? DCI Tom Barnaby: No, not in a murder case.

   1998 May 6, Douglas Watkinson et al., “Death in Disguise”, in Midsomer Murders

4. countableobsoleteA place of seclusion.
5. countableobsoleteuncountablelawA relationship between parties seen as being a result of their mutual interest or participation in a given transaction, contract etc.

   Synonyms: privity

6. countableobsoleteuncountableSecrecy.
7. countableobsoleteA private matter.

   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: […]

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

   Synonyms: secret