See hide 1.
First recorded in 1700–10; back formation from secretion
1735–45; alteration of obsolete secret, verb use of secret
From French; see origin at secret
Secrete is all about secrets. It means both "to hide" and "to release." When you squeeze a lemon, it secretes juice. When you stuff your money in a mattress, you secrete it there. It's easy to remember that secrete's all about secrets when you see the word secret inside secrete. Imagine the first person who squeezed a lemon and secreted the juice. Probably felt like he'd discovered a secret stash of citrus goodness. If he was greedy, maybe he gathered all the lemons he could find and secreted them away in a box so no one else would learn the secret of the juice-secretion.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Beavers were hunted to extinction in Britain 400 years ago for their meat, furry water-resistant pelts and a substance they secrete called castoreum - used in food, medicine and perfume.
From BBC ● Jun. 27, 2025
Her team pays attention to other stress markers, such as that they secrete mucus when biologically stressed.
From Salon ● May 13, 2025
Hairs covering the stems, leaves and flowers have glands that secrete a sticky substance containing prenylated phenols, which cause an itchy rash, according to Lewis.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 5, 2025
Dr. Lyden and colleagues have found in prior research that tumor cells secrete snippets of EV-DNA from across their genomes, including pieces with cancer-associated mutations.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 3, 2024
Tufts of feathers sprout from the chicken’s skull, and its feet secrete a sticky liquid.
From "Dreaming in Cuban" by Cristina García
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Prieur wrote in her butt-covering memoir Agent secrète, published in 1995.
From Slate ● Jul. 22, 2025
The novel — “La plus secrète mémoire des hommes” in French — was praised nearly universally, with Le Monde calling it “a great book.”
From New York Times ● Jul. 22, 2022
The researchers then narrowed the search to genes that produce proteins secreted outside the cell, a common feature of hormones, and that contained at least four possible cleavage sites.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 24, 2026
It mimics a hormone secreted alongside insulin that signals fullness and slows gastric emptying.
From Barron's ● Apr. 27, 2026
Released in 2010, “Tangled” is Disney’s animated take on the fairy tale “Rapunzel,” about a young princess with long blond magical hair who had been unknowingly kidnapped and secreted away in an isolated tower.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 10, 2026
We analyzed cell-free RNA from 25 cancer cell lines across 9 tissue types and found that about 30% of oncRNAs are actively secreted.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 17, 2026
Smith had had enough and secreted the horse away to a new stall.
From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand
Males of the shrimplike species, called "entraining grassbed downer" or EGD for short, create distinct patterns of bioluminescence to attract females by secreting packets of protein from a specialized gland.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 30, 2023
The researchers isolated vSSCs from people undergoing spinal surgery and found that human vSSCs secreting MFGE8 were more likely to interact with cancer cells than vSSCs that were not secreting the protein.
From Scientific American ● Sep. 14, 2023
He adds that this is the first record of land-dwelling invertebrates producing and secreting this particular neurotoxin.
From National Geographic ● Aug. 4, 2023
The bacteria works by secreting a small molecule, known as harmane, which inhibits the early stages of the malaria parasite growing in the mosquito's gut.
From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2023
Some ancient redesigning of the house had left a crawl space in that corner and we’d been secreting jewelry, silver coins, and other valuables there since the start of the occupation.
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
