privilege
Pluralprivileges
Verbprivileges, privileging, privileged
Pluralprivileges
Formsprivileges, privileging, privileged
- 1A particular benefit, advantage, or right enjoyed by some but not others; preferential treatment.
Diplomatic privilege allowed her to bypass the usual customs checks.
Season-ticket holders are granted privileges that casual visitors never receive.
Similarright, prerogative, immunity, franchise
Note
This is privilege as something you hold, one benefit among several, so it takes a plural easily: special privileges, such a privilege. That is what separates it from privilege as social status, which names a condition rather than a possession. Prerogative, franchise and immunity are its near neighbors. In Northern England and Scotland the old word freelage covers the same ground.
- 2The condition of being privileged; the social or economic advantage that some people hold within a given society.
The author writes candidly about her own privilege and how it shaped her career.
Debates about privilege often focus on who benefits from existing systems.
Similaradvantage
Oppositedisadvantage, deprivation
Note
A mass noun for advantage as a social fact. George Orwell's The Lion and the Unicorn (1941) already pictures people clinging "to their miserable scraps of privilege" until their country is in danger. In 2013 The Guardian put "white privilege" in a headline about South Africa. In that compound the word names the structural advantage of a whole group rather than any single favor.
- 3A rare and fortunate chance to do something, or the good luck of being able to do it.
Few people get the privilege of seeing a total solar eclipse twice.
Performing at the festival was a privilege she never expected.
Similarhonor, pleasure, opportunity, joy
Note
A phrase of gratitude more than of advantage, it usually comes with the definite article and a following verb. A writer to The Observer in 2012 recalls that "I had the privilege to sit near him in the House". The pattern of plus an -ing form (the privilege of seeing) is just as natural. Either way, the speaker is honoring the occasion or the person, not claiming a right.
- 4A common law doctrine that shields certain communications, such as those between a lawyer and client, from use as evidence in court.
The defense invoked privilege to exclude the client's confidential letters.
Attorney-client privilege prevented the prosecutor from accessing those notes.
Similarconfidentiality
Note
In court, privilege attaches to a relationship rather than to a person. Attorney-client privilege is the familiar compound, and spouses or doctor and patient can have the same protection. A lawyer invokes or claims it, or says an answer "is protected by privilege". Both lawyer and client then decline to disclose, because the law values the candor of the relationship over the court's appetite for every fact.
- 5An ability to perform a particular action on a system, which can be granted or denied to individual users.
The administrator revoked his privilege to modify the database.
Each user account is assigned privileges based on its role.
Similarpermission
Note
Computing borrowed the old sense of a right granted to some and not to others, then made it granular. Administrators grant and revoke privileges one action at a time. The principle of least privilege says each account or process should hold only the privileges its task requires. Permission is the everyday synonym, and the two are often used interchangeably in system documentation.
- 6The set of rights and legal immunities held by a legislature and the people who serve in it.
Legislative privilege protects members from being sued over remarks made in debate.
She invoked privilege to refuse the court's summons while the house was sitting.
Similarimmunity
Note
The phrase to know is under privilege. A congressman "speaking under congressional privilege" can call someone a "purported Russian mob figure" in debate without being sued for it. Immunity is the close synonym. This protection belongs to lawmakers and their words in the chamber. Do not confuse it with the courtroom doctrine, which shields particular confidential exchanges from being used as evidence.
- 7To give something greater importance or priority over other things.
Reviewers should privilege accuracy above novelty when assessing a study.
Modern hiring often privileges experience above formal qualifications.
Similarfavor, prioritize, prefer, foreground
Oppositemarginalize, subordinate, downplay
Note
The live verb today, and a favorite of critics. Jon Caramanica, writing in The New York Times in 2022, describes R&B that "privileges mood over structure". The pattern is privilege one thing over or above another, and the objects are usually qualities or ideas rather than people. That sets it apart from the archaic granting verb, whose objects were persons and institutions.
- 8A papal exemption releasing a person or institution from the obligation of certain laws.
The abbey secured a privilege exempting it from the usual tithes.
Several friars traveled to Rome to obtain a privilege for their new house.
Similardispensation, exemption
Note
Here the word stays closest to its Latin source. A prīvilēgium was a law aimed at one individual, from prīvus "private" and lēx "law", and a papal privilege was exactly that: a ruling for one abbey, order or person that set the general law aside. Today it belongs chiefly to historical writing about the church. It can be counted (a privilege) or used as a mass noun.
Less common meanings
- 9To grant a particular right, immunity, or authority to a person or body.
The crown moved to privilege certain merchants with exclusive trading rights.
Ancient charters privileged the abbey to collect tolls on the bridge.
Note
The verb does what a charter does: it confers a right on a named person or body. It takes a direct object, often followed by from, as in to privilege representatives from arrest. The verb itself is archaic, but its past participle lives on in the everyday adjective privileged. In modern prose, grant, exempt or authorize will say the same thing without sounding antique.
- 10To bring into a condition of protection from evil or danger; to exempt or deliver from harm.
The old prayer was thought to privilege the faithful from sudden death.
No rank could privilege a man from the judgment that awaited everyone.
Note
Where the granting verb hands someone a right, this one shields them from harm. Exempt and deliver are its nearest modern equivalents, and it typically pairs with from: privilege the faithful from sudden death. The usage is archaic. It survives as a reading word for older prose, not as one to reach for in your own writing.
- 11A stock market option; a contract granting the right to buy or sell a security at a set price.
The broker offered his client a privilege on the cotton futures.
He cleared his losses by exercising a privilege at exactly the right moment.
Note
An American market term that has dropped out of use. Where a trader now speaks of an option, older US finance spoke of a privilege, meaning a purchased right to buy or sell at a set price later. You will meet it in old financial writing. In any modern context, option is the word to use, and privilege would confuse a reader.
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Practice
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Origin
From Middle English privilege, borrowed via Anglo-Norman and Old French privilege from Latin prīvilēgium, 'an ordinance or law against or in favor of an individual,' which was formed from prīvus ('private') plus lēx, lēg- ('law').