the.com/nondisclosure
A contract that makes silence legally binding and curiosity criminal.
means An agreement in which one or more parties promise not to share certain private or confidential information with outsiders.
from Built from the Latin-rooted 'disclose' — dis- (undo, reverse) plus claudere (to close/shut) — meaning literally 'to unshut,' i.e. reveal. Add the negating 'non-' and you get a word that undoes the undoing: a formal, legalistic knot tied in the 20th century as business and litigation demanded a tidy noun for 'the state of keeping shut.' The term rose alongside modern contract law and trade-secret protection, becoming shorthand (NDA) for paperwork that turns ordinary gossip into a breach of contract.
- origin
- Standard in trade-secret law since the 1940s
- scope creep
- Now covers breakups, settlements, and bad dates
- loophole
- Cannot silence testimony about actual crimes
- irony
- Its existence often reveals something worth hiding