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secret-sacred

adj · 1 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

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1

adj

Meaning 1

In Australian Aboriginal culture, restricted to initiated men, or to women; not public knowledge.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: not-comparable

Examples

  • 2001, Moira G. Simpson, Making Representations: Museums in the Post-Colonial Era Most major Australian museums now hold secret/sacred material in a separate storage area, with access restricted to specified curatorial staff and to those members of the relevant Aboriginal community who have the right to view such material.
  • 2004, Robert Tonkinson, Individual Creativity and Property-Power Disjunction in an Australian Desert Society, in Property and Equality: Ritualization, Sharing, Egalitarianism While it is true that, in some areas, women possessed secret-sacred knowledge and rituals, nowhere was this corpus considered more important for social reproduction than that held by mature men, who claimed they exercised their responsibilities for the society as a whole.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

History

Etymology

No etymology was provided for this word.