This is serious!
Partial defination of “secret”, from m-w:
Is that fly speck on my closet ceiling a secret?
Also, is a pebble at the bottom of the Mariana Trench hidden?
In case the question arises unbidden, the answer to the bear poop query is yes, as is the tree noise one.
And the chicken came first because the bible says so.
Peace,
mangeorge
First we need to define the word secret.
To me a secret is information that has value. The information itself might not be important, or it cold be critically important.
A secret is not necassarily information, it could be a belief in the existance of information.
Without value, information of no interest is not really a secret.
Remember that scene from Jurassic Park?
And he was right. Nobody cared.
And I didn’t care enough to remember if his name was Johnson, or something else.
Key word is “kept”. There must be intent involved in the hiding or making mysterious of whatever is the secret. It’s not secret if it’s merely unknown or undiscovered (although the word is sometimes used in this sense).
Based on the thread title, I would have to say that a ‘secet’ is not a ‘secret’. No, not the same at all.