secret [LME] Secret goes back to the Latin adjective secretus meaning ‘separate, set apart’. Secretary [LME] originally referred to a ‘person entrusted with a secret’. A secretarius in late Latin was a ‘confidential officer’. Secrete [M18th] meaning ‘to hide’ is from the same source, but the sense secrete ‘produce and discharge’ (secreting insulin) dates from the early 18th century and was from secretion [M17th] which is from Latin secretio ‘separation’.