means the state of being free from observation, intrusion, or unwanted attention, where you control who knows your business.

from From Latin 'privatus,' meaning 'set apart, belonging to oneself' — the same root that gives us 'private' and 'deprive.' It comes from 'privare,' to separate or release from public life. In Roman thought, a 'privatus' was a citizen withdrawn from public office, an ordinary person rather than a magistrate; the word carried a faint sense of being 'cut off' from the shared world. English picked up 'privacy' from this stock, and it has meant 'seclusion from others' ever since.