# closet

Pronunciation: US say "KLAH-zit" /ˈklɑzɪt/; UK say "KLO-zit" /ˈklɒzɪt/

## Noun

1. A small room or built-in space in a house for storing clothes, linens, food, or other household items.
   - Simple: A small room in a home where you keep clothes, food, or other things.
   - _The bedroom closet barely held all of her winter coats._
   - _He cleaned out the linen closet and donated the old blankets._
2. The state of keeping one's sexual orientation a secret from other people.
   - Simple: The situation of keeping it secret that you are gay, lesbian, or bisexual.
   - _Many actors of his generation remained in the closet throughout their careers._
   - _He came out of the closet to his coworkers last spring._
4. A cabinet set aside for its owner's private use.
   - Simple: A cabinet that someone keeps for their own 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._
5. A figurative hiding place for secrets, surviving chiefly in idioms such as in the closet and skeleton in the closet.
   - Simple: A secret place where something is hidden, as in the saying 'a 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._
6. A condition in which something is kept secret, private, or unknown to others.
   - Simple: The state of keeping something about yourself hidden from other people.
   - _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._
8. Any small room in a building, or a side room leading off a larger one.
   - Simple: Any small room, or a small room to the side of a bigger 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._
12. Clipping of closet case. *(slang)* — Clipping of closet case.
   - Simple: Short for closet case. An often insulting slang name for someone who hides being gay.

## Adjective

3. Concealing one's homosexuality; closeted, used especially of gay people who have not made their orientation public.
   - Simple: Hiding the fact that you are gay or lesbian.
   - _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._
7. Kept as a secret or private matter; not openly admitted, displayed, or made known to others.
   - Simple: Kept secret and not shown or told to other people.
   - _The professor turned out to be a closet romance novelist._
   - _Polls suggest plenty of closet supporters who will not admit their vote to friends._

## Verb

9. To shut someone away in a private room for a confidential discussion or meeting.
   - Simple: To take someone into a private room to talk without other people listening.
   - _The president closeted his advisers for hours before announcing the decision._
   - _Negotiators will closet the two delegations until they reach a deal._
10. To shut someone or something up in a small room or hiding place for concealment or confinement.
   - Simple: To shut someone or something away in a small room or hidden place.
   - _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._
11. To take someone aside into a private place for a secret interview or interrogation.
   - Simple: To take someone to a private place to question them in secret.
   - _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._

## Noun

13. Clipping of closet of ease: a room containing a toilet. *(obsolete, Ireland, Scotland)*
   - Simple: Clipping of closet of ease. Old writing uses it to mean a small room with a toilet.
   - _The new house boasted an indoor closet, sparing the family the walk to the outhouse._
   - _She complained that the closet drained poorly and sent for the plumber._
14. A private or inner room of a house, where a person could withdraw to be alone. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: A private room inside a house where a person can be alone.
   - _After supper, the merchant retired to his closet to go over the accounts._
   - _She received the lawyer not in the parlor but in her own closet upstairs._
16. The private residence or council chamber of a monarch, where personal business and confidential counsel were conducted. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: A private room where a king or queen lived or met with trusted advisers.
   - _The ambassador was granted a rare audience in the royal closet, away from the crowded presence chamber._
   - _Elizabeth withdrew to her closet to read the dispatches before summoning her ministers._
17. A private room in which a woman groomed and dressed herself, typically adjoining her bedchamber. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: A private room where a woman dressed and fixed her hair.
18. A small private room set apart for prayer or other personal devotions. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: A small private room used only for praying.
   - _The household gathered for evening prayers, but he preferred the solitude of his closet._
   - _Her closet held only a chair, a kneeling cushion, and a worn Bible._
19. A place of secluded contemplation and theorizing, often fanciful and removed from practical experience. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: A quiet place where someone sits and thinks up ideas that may not work in real life.
   - _These schemes were hatched in the closet and collapsed at first contact with the market._
   - _Critics dismissed the reform as a product of the closet rather than of the battlefield._
20. A private cabinet in which money, jewels, papers, or other valuables were kept. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: A small cabinet with a lock where people kept money, jewels, and important papers.
21. A private cabinet used to store and display curiosities such as natural specimens, antiquities, and rarities. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: A cabinet where someone kept strange and interesting things to show to visitors.
   - _The collector's closet contained fossils, Roman coins, and a stuffed crocodile._
   - _He opened his closet to learned guests, who marveled at corals and carved ivories._
22. In a church, a pew or side chapel set apart for a monarch or other feudal lord. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: A special seat or small chapel in a church kept only for a king or a lord.
   - _The earl heard mass from his closet, screened from the rest of the congregation._
   - _A carved oak closet overlooking the chancel was reserved for the lord of the manor._
23. Any private or secluded space, particularly a sheltered bower in the open air. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: Any private, hidden spot, even one outdoors, like a quiet corner among trees.
   - _The lovers withdrew to a leafy closet formed by the arbor's tangled roses._
   - _Poets praised the valley's mossy closets, hidden from every road._
24. A compendium of knowledge, especially a published collection of recipes, remedies, or practical secrets. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: A book that gathers useful knowledge, like recipes or home cures, in one place.
   - _The printer advertised a new closet of physic, promising cures for forty complaints._
   - _Every recipe in the closet had been gathered from gentlewomen across the county._
25. An underground channel or drain for carrying away waste and runoff; a sewer. *(obsolete, Scotland)*
   - Simple: An underground pipe or channel that carried away dirty water and waste.
   - _After heavy rains the closet overflowed, flooding the cellars along the lane._
   - _Masons were hired to repair the brick closet that ran beneath the high street._

## Adjective

15. Private; carried on or kept away from public knowledge or view. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: Kept private and not shared with other people.

## Other meanings

- (noun) In heraldry, an ordinary resembling the bar but only half as broad.

## Origin

This word came through Middle English from Old French "closet," formed from "clos" ("private space") plus the diminutive suffix "-et," ultimately from Latin "clausum." It is equivalent to "close" + "-et," though in French the term generally referred only to small open-air enclosures.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/closet (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).