privata

The base arrives at last, and it explains a word we met three hundred ranks ago. Privilegio is privus plus lex, and it means what it says: a private law, a rule written for one individual rather than for everybody. That page had to leave the first half unexplained because privata had not appeared yet. Here it is. Both come from Latin privus, one's own, through privare, to set apart - so a privilege sets a person apart by law and a privata thing is set apart from common use.

The fence that matters is with publika. These two are exact opposites in Esperanto as in English, and the pair does the same work: privata lernejo against publika lernejo, privata vivo against publika vivo, privata posedaĵo against public property. Privata is about who owns or controls a thing, and that is the whole of its meaning.

Three near neighbours it is not. Propra is "one's own" and marks possession rather than exclusion, so mia propra domo is my own house whether or not anybody else may enter it. Sekreto is about concealment - a private letter is one you have a right to keep, a secret letter is one nobody knows exists. Intima is about closeness between people. A doctor's notes are privataj; your feelings about them are intimaj.