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say it: PRAHY-vuht
private is an adjective and noun meaning "confined to particular persons or groups or providing privacy". It is pronounced /ˈpɹaɪvət/ — PRAHY-vuht. It carries 5 recorded senses.
confined to particular persons or groups or providing privacy
“a private place”
“private discussions”
“private lessons”
“a private club”
“a private secretary”
“private property”
“the former President is now a private citizen”
“public figures struggle to maintain a private life”
concerning one person exclusively
“we all have individual cars”
“each room has a private bath”
an enlisted man of the lowest rank in the Army or Marines
“our prisoner was just a private and knew nothing of value”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for private come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.