closet

Pluralclosets

Formsclosets, closeting, closeted

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A small room or built-in space in a house for storing clothes, linens, food, or other household items.

   The bedroom closet barely held all of her winter coats.

   He cleaned out the linen closet and donated the old blankets.

   Similarcupboard, wardrobe

   Note

   At root this is a little enclosure: Old French clos, "private space," plus the diminutive -et, reaching back to Latin clausum. Jane Austen, writing in 1799, drew a firm line between it and its neighbor word, insisting that a closet full of shelves should be called a cupboard. For her, a closet was a small room. Today the household closet takes in clothes, food and linens alike.

2. 2
   noun

   The state of keeping one's sexual orientation a secret from other people.

   Many actors of his generation remained in the closet throughout their careers.

   He came out of the closet to his coworkers last spring.

   Note

   The narrowest heir of the broad sense of secrecy, and today the one most readers hear first. It can be plural and personal. Michael Bronski, writing about Rock Hudson in Gay Community News in 1985, speaks of "the closets of the people," as if each person had one of their own. The core phrases are in the closet, come out of the closet and, in short form, come out.

3. 3
   adjective

   Concealing one's homosexuality; closeted, used especially of gay people who have not made their orientation public.

   The biography revealed that the director had been a closet gay man throughout his marriage.

   As a closet lesbian in the 1950s, she kept her partner a secret even from close friends.

   Similarsecret, hidden, covert

   Oppositeout, open

   Note

   The adjective stands only before a noun: a closet case, a closet gay man. After a verb, English switches to closeted (he was closeted). The pattern is older than its association with sexuality. Walton Hall Smith and Ferdinand Helwig's Liquor, the Servant of Man (1940) already describes "the closet drinker," whose secret is a bottle rather than an identity.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A cabinet set aside for its owner's private use.

   The collector kept his rarest shells and fossils in a private closet that few visitors were ever shown.

   A seventeenth-century collector's closet, a cabinet of curiosities, held carved ivory and rare coins.

   Similarcabinet

   Note

   Here the closet shrinks to a piece of furniture, and the word's root fits it well: Old French clos, "private space", plus the diminutive -et, a little enclosure of one's own. Such a cabinet was kept for a purpose, chiefly holding valuables or storing curiosities. What sets it apart from an ordinary cupboard is ownership: it answers to one person rather than a household.

5. 5
   nounfigurativelycountable

   A figurative hiding place for secrets, surviving chiefly in idioms such as in the closet and skeleton in the closet.

   The audit dragged every skeleton in the company's closet into daylight.

   Her past stayed firmly in the closet until a reporter started digging.

   Similarcupboard

   Note

   The hiding place that idioms still use. As early as 1530, a devotional book speaks of Christ leaving "the pryuy closet of the maydens wombe," a hidden place that is sacred rather than shameful. Today the sense lives mainly in fixed phrases. A skeleton in the closet is a discreditable secret, while in the closet usually points to concealed sexual orientation.

6. 6
   noun

   A condition in which something is kept secret, private, or unknown to others.

   After decades in the closet, the author admitted she had written the bestsellers under a pen name.

   He came out of the closet as an atheist at a family dinner.

   Similarsecrecy, hiding

7. 7
   adjective

   Kept as a secret or private matter; not openly admitted, displayed, or made known to others.

   The professor turned out to be a closet romance novelist.

   Polls suggest plenty of closet supporters who will not admit their vote to friends.

   Similarsecret, covert, hidden, undercover, private

   Oppositeopen, avowed, overt, declared

8. 8
   nouncountable

   Any small room in a building, or a side room leading off a larger one.

   The minister wrote his sermons in a narrow closet off the sitting room of the manse.

   When the family came home from Dublin for Christmas, the youngest boy got a folding bed in the closet beside the kitchen.

   Similarchamber, cubbyhole

   Note

   This use now lives on chiefly in Scotland and Ireland, and there a closet need not store anything at all. It stays close to the "little enclosure" at the word's root: what makes a closet is size and position, not contents. Readers elsewhere picture a storage room, so a closet off the kitchen in Scottish or Irish writing may well hold a bed or a desk rather than coats.

9. 9
   verbtransitive

   To shut someone away in a private room for a confidential discussion or meeting.

   The president closeted his advisers for hours before announcing the decision.

   Negotiators will closet the two delegations until they reach a deal.

   Similarsequester, seclude, shut

   Note

   Most often met in the passive with with: someone has been closeted with someone else, usually powerful people meeting behind closed doors. The phrasing invites speculation, since outsiders know a meeting is happening but not what is said. The forms keep a single t: closeted, closeting. The active version, closeting one's advisers, is grammatical but less common.

10. 10
    verbtransitive

    To shut someone or something up in a small room or hiding place for concealment or confinement.

    Her parents closeted the old letters in a trunk no one was allowed to open.

    The regime tried to closet dissidents far from foreign journalists.

    Similarhide, conceal, confine, lock, shut

    Note

    This sense is about hiding or confining, not meeting in private. William Cowper in 1784 sets Bedlam's "closeted" patient beside a handcuffed one, a literal shut-in. In Toni Morrison's Jazz (1992), Alice closets her envious pleasure, hiding a feeling rather than a body. The verb always takes an object. Its participle closeted works readily as an adjective, unlike the private-discussion sense.

11. 11
    verbtransitive

    To take someone aside into a private place for a secret interview or interrogation.

    Investigators closeted the accountant for a full afternoon of questions about the missing funds.

    The chairman liked to closet wavering board members one by one before a vote.

    Similarbuttonhole, corner

    Note

    Here the private room is a tool of pressure. George Bancroft's History of the United States uses it actively: to call a legislature and then "to closet its members," taking them aside to question or persuade them one at a time. James Anthony Froude writes "he had been closeted with De Quadra," where the secrecy itself is the news. The verb suggests isolation and leverage, not mere privacy.

12. 12
    nounslangabbreviationclipping

    Clipping of closet case.

    Note

    A clipping that turns the place into the person: closet case shortens to closet, so someone can be called a closet, with the plural closets. It is uncommon slang for someone concealing their sexuality or gender identity. The full form can also mean a person shunned as an embarrassment. Keep it apart from the adjective, which stands before another noun rather than naming a person.

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