state secret

Definitions

1. Information which pertains to the affairs of a country, access to which is restricted by the government.
2. Personal information which someone would like to keep private, even if ultimately not important.
   broadly, humorous

Equivalents

Examples

“I'll tell⟳ you one great State secret: the Queen, sensible how much she was governed by the late Ministry, runs a little into t'other extreme, and is jealous in that point⟳.”

“[T]here are another set⟳ of rascals prowling about the docks, chiefly at dusk, who make⟳ strange motions to you, and beckon you to one side, as if they had some state secret to disclose, intimately connected with the weal of the commonwealth.”

“"Your brother," he continued, "in his travels on the Continent stumbled by chance upon a State secret of international importance."”

“Zimbabwean prosecutors have⟳ charged four men including top figures from President Robert Mugabe's party with selling state secrets to foreign agents.”

CEFR level