private [LME] Someone who is private has literally ‘withdrawn from public life’ and is acting as an ordinary citizen—that is the meaning of the Latin root, from privare ‘to bereave, deprive’ from privus ‘single, individual’. It is also the root of deprive [ME], privilege [OE], and privation [ME]. In the army privates are ordinary soldiers as opposed to officers. They were originally, from the 1560s, private soldiers. Privates meaning ‘the genitals’ is first recorded in around 1450. Back in the 13th century privy, which is from the same root, meant ‘belonging to your own private circle’. The meaning ‘a lavatory’ is as old and comes from the idea of this being a private place.