secret society
24
6.3
- noun
- /ˈsiːkrɪt səˈsaɪəti/
:
sociedad secreta
- Many famous leaders were rumored to have been part of a secret society that influenced major decisions.
- members of a secret society
- many secret societies
So a lot of older academic institutions will have these kind of clubs or secret societies.
- So a lot of older academic institutions will have these kind of clubs or secret societies.
- And this guy has been initiated into more than a handful of the top secret societies in the world.
- So we talked about bestiaries and Hildegard von Bingen and this secret society called the Brethren of Purity.
- Yeah, you just his nail on the head of the secret society Brotherhood.
- That is an actual secret society that exists and members are in it.
- Egypt are what might almost be described as secret societies.
- It's it's one of those it's like all of you know, like the, the secret society is going to come and get you.
- You see the importance of it, the clandestine secret society thing.
Examples
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For three decades before 1990, too, the Liberation Movements, symbols of countervailing power, operated as secret societies.
Academic text (1996) -
They all belonged to a secret society, you see.
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- He started a secret society.
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That is an actual secret society that exists and members are in it.
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One night he took me to a secret society he was mixed up with.
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In the meantime, the secret society had financial problems.
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What do you think this secret society can really accomplish?
Fiction book (1992) -
Soon individual owners began doing so publicly, as did the secret societies as a whole.
Academic text (1999) -
A private club they'd made, an exclusive secret society of three members only.
Fiction book (1994) -
The Church condemns all secret societies.
Synonyms
37
7.6
A group of people who share interests and meet regularly
32
8.9
A secret group that plans together to gain power, often in politics
23
9.0
A secret group some people believe controls world events from behind the scenes
How Secret
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and transparently derived from 'secret' (intentionally hidden) modifying 'society' (an association of people); an adjective‑noun composition that straightforwardly yields 'a society that is secret'. This compositional pattern is cross‑linguistically common (e.g., Spanish 'sociedad secreta', French 'société secrète'), so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can infer the meaning.
Etymology
Secret society comes from groups that met in hidden rooms, used secret signs, and kept their members private. That picture explains why a society that is secret means 'an organization' whose members, activities, or rituals are kept from people outside.