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seclusion

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Etymology and origin of the English word seclusion

Confidence
Established
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
1623 Cockeram's English Dictionarie More words from the 17th century
Borrowed from
Latin seclusio
Ultimate origin
Latin claudō

Pronunciation

  • /səˈkluːʒən/[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Medieval Latin sēclūsiō,[2][3][4][5][6] a noun of action from Latin sēclūsus, the past participle of sēclūdō (“to shut off, confine”),[2][7][8] which is formed from sē- (“apart”) and claudō (“to shut”).[2][7] Its verb is seclude, recorded in English since the mid-15th century.[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The action of shutting out or secluding, exclusion: 1623, in Cockeram's English Dictionarie.[6] Etymonline likewise dates the word to the 1620s,[7] Merriam-Webster Unabridged to about 1616,[8] and Dictionary.com to 1615–25.[5]

Semantic evolution

The word first named an action, with "exclusion" as one of its meanings, and that sense is now obsolete or rare.[6][7][9] The verb seclude was similarly used as a loose synonym of exclude for a long time, before it narrowed to the sense of keeping someone away from company.[6] Blount's Glossographia (1656) records the noun seclusory, a place where anything is shut up apart from another.[7] The state of being secluded, now the main sense, appears in the 1780s: by 1784 in Etymonline,[7] and in 1785 in Cowper's The Task in the OED.[6] A secluded place was called a seclusion from 1791, in A. Radcliffe's Romance of the Forest.[6] In Scots law the word is recorded for an act of keeping out, an exclusion.[8]

Timeline

  • 1623 – the action of secluding; exclusion.[6] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates it to about 1616.[8]
  • 1785 – the condition of being secluded, with the phrase in seclusion, apart from society.[6] Etymonline has this by 1784.[7]
  • 1791 – a place in which one is secluded.[6]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The condition of being kept apart from others; privacy, solitude: The poet spent her last years in seclusion on the coast.[3][8][9]
  2. The act of secluding: the seclusion of monks in their cells.[3][8][6]
  3. A secluded or isolated place.[3][8][9]
  4. (Scots law) An act of keeping out; exclusion.[8]
  5. (obsolete) Exclusion in general.[6][7]

Word family

  • seclusive
  • seclusively
  • seclusiveness
  • nonseclusion
  • seclusionist

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  3. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  4. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  9. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Seclusion.” Etymologically, 6 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/seclusion. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

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