closeted

Definition

Not open about one's sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity.

Etymology

From closet (“state of concealment”) + -ed.

Example Sentences

• "Sally Gearhart, an ex-christian from Illinois who in the early seventies abandoned closeted lesbianism on Midwestern church college faculties for radical feminism in San Francisco,"
• "1992, Tony Kushner, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995, Part Two: Perestroika, Act One, Scene 4, p. 156, Belize: Get out your oven mitts. Guess who just checked in with the troubles? The Killer Queen Herself. New York's number one closeted queer."
• "[…] the remaining quotations, chiefly from English poetry, interested me only slightly more. They were the elegiac favourites of a closeted Romantic."