the.com/secrecy

means The practice of keeping information hidden from those who aren't meant to know it.

from From Latin 'secretus,' meaning separated or set apart — itself from 'secernere,' to sift or distinguish, built from 'se-' (apart) plus 'cernere' (to sift, to decide). The same root gives us 'secret' and 'discern.' So secrecy is etymologically about sorting things into piles — what's shared and what's set aside — long before it became a byword for locked drawers and lowered voices.