concealment

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English concelement,^[2][3] borrowed from Anglo-Norman concelement, recorded from the last third of the 13th century,^[4][5][2] and partly, in later use, formed from English conceal + -ment.^[4] Etymonline, Barnhart and Klein name Old French concelement and Merriam-Webster Middle French.^[6][7][8][3] The noun comes from conceler (“to hide”),^[6][7][4] from Latin concēlō (“to hide”),^[7][9] formed from an intensive con- and cēlō (“to hide”),^[7][9][6] from Proto-Indo-European *kel- (“to cover, conceal, save”).^[6][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The crime of suppressing information to another's injury: before 1325, in the Statutes of the Realm.^[4][7] Anglo-Norman had already used it for hiding stolen goods, suppressing facts and withholding something.^[5][4]

Semantic evolution

The word began as a legal term.^[6][4] The general sense of keeping something secret is first quoted from 1565,^[4] and Shakespeare's plays then give the first records of the state of being hidden (King Lear, 1608) and of hiding something from sight (Coriolanus, before 1616),^[4] while Etymonline dates the general sense "state of being concealed" to about 1600.^[6] From 1593 law also used it for holding land said to belong to the Crown without an official claim to it.^[4] Johnson (1755) defined the word as the act of hiding, or secrecy, and quoted Twelfth Night for it: "let concealment, like a worm in the bud, feed on her damask cheek".^[10] From 1790 it has also meant the crime of concealing the birth of a baby who then died.^[4]

Timeline

• before 1325 – law, suppressing information to another's injury.^[4][7]
• 1565 – keeping something secret.^[4]
• 1593 – law, holding Crown land without a claim to it; a means of concealing, a hiding place.^[4]
• 1598 – a secret, a mystery (obsolete by 1622).^[4]
• 1608 – the state of being hidden.^[4]
• before 1616 – the act of hiding something from sight.^[4]
• 1790 – the crime of concealing a birth.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act or practice of hiding something or keeping it secret.^[3][4][11]
2. The state of being hidden: The deserters stayed in concealment until the spring.^[3][4]
3. Something that conceals; a hiding place.^[3][4]
4. (law) The failure to disclose what ought to be revealed, especially a known fact by a party to a contract.^[11][3][4]
5. (obsolete, 1598–1622) A secret or mystery; secret knowledge.^[3][4]

Word family

• nonconcealment

Related words

• conceal
• cell
• clandestine
• occult
• apocalypse

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
3. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
6. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press