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say it: SEE-kruht
secret is an adjective and noun meaning "not open or public; kept private or not revealed". It carries 14 recorded senses.
not open or public; kept private or not revealed
“a secret formula”
“secret ingredients”
“secret talks”
conducted with or marked by hidden aims or methods
“clandestine intelligence operations”
“cloak-and-dagger activities behind enemy lines”
“hole-and-corner intrigue”
“secret missions”
“a secret agent”
“secret sales of arms”
“surreptitious mobilization of troops”
“an undercover investigation”
“underground resistance”
(of information) given in confidence or in secret
“this arrangement must be kept confidential”
“their secret communications”
the next to highest level of official classification for documents
something that should remain hidden from others (especially information that is not to be passed on)
“the combination to the safe was a secret”
“he tried to keep his drinking a secret”
information known only to a special group
“the secret of Cajun cooking”
something that baffles understanding and cannot be explained
“how it got out is a mystery”
“it remains one of nature's secrets”
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 secret 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.