secretive.
Having an inclination to secrecy.
Meaning & usage
Having an inclination to secrecy.
She's a secretive girl, not giving away much about her life.
Why are you acting all secretive? What are you hiding?
Where this word comes from
From Middle English secretife, equivalent to secret + -ive.
Relating to secretion.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree English secrete Proto-Indo-European *-wós Proto-Indo-European *-iHwósder. Latin -īvus Old French -ifbor. Middle English -yf English -ive English secretive From secrete + -ive.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.