Emily Dickinson Lexicon

PRIV'Y, n.

1. In law, a partaker; a person having an interest in any action or thing; as, a privy in blood. Privies are of four kinds; privies in blood, as the heir to his father; privies in representation, as, executors and administrators to the deceased; privies in estate, as he in reversion and he in remainder; donor and donee; lessor and lessee; privy in tenure, as the lord in escheat. – Encyc.
2. A necessary house. Privy chamber, in Great Britain, the private apartment in a royal residence or mansion. Gentlemen of the privy chamber are servants of the king, who are to wait and attend on him and the queen at court, in their diversions, &c. They are forty-eight in number, under the lord chamberlain. – Encyc.