Definition of "privilege" []

• A special advantage, immunity, permission, right, or benefit granted to or enjoyed by an individual, class, or caste. See Synonyms at right. (noun)
• Such an advantage, immunity, or right held as a prerogative of status or rank, and exercised to the exclusion or detriment of others. (noun)
• The principle of granting and maintaining a special right or immunity: a society based on privilege. (noun)
• Law The right to privileged communication in a confidential relationship, as between client and attorney, patient and physician, or communicant and priest. (noun)
• An option to buy or sell a stock, including put, call, spread, and straddle. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "V. iii.129 (478,1) Behold, it is the privilege of mine honours,/My oath, and my profession] The _privilege_ of this _oath_ means the privilege gained by taking the oath administered in the regular initiation of a knight professed."
• "Nevertheless, as this subject matter of a concordat is not necessarily homogeneous (the unity of a concordat being merely extrinsic and accidental) it follows that although the term privilege may be applied to a concordat taken as a whole, it cannot necessarily be used of every clause in the same."
• "We appreciate that this privilege has been afforded Nurse Chaplin for most of her career, through her years of invaluable service, and that the loss of privilege is often perceived as an infringement of rights, but her reaction (and yours) is actually quite revealing as to why this is a privilege rather than a right, why her demand for exemption is of dubious merit."