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Let us therefore return to the German language. In Daniel Sanders’s Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache (1860, 1, 729), the following entry, which I here reproduce in full, is to be found under the word ‘heimlich’. I have laid stress on one or two passages by italicizing them.

Heimlich, adj., subst. Heimlichkeit (pl. Heimlichkeiten): I. Also heimelich, heimelig, belonging to the house, not strange, familiar, tame, intimate, friendly, etc.

(a) (Obsolete) belonging to the house or the family, or regarded as so belonging (cf. Latin familiaris, familiar): Die Heimlichen, the members of the household; Der heimliche Rat (Gen. xli, 45; 2 Sam. xxiii. 23; 1 Chron. xii. 25; Wisd. viii. 4), now more usually Geheimer Rat [Privy Councillor].

(b) Of animals: tame, companionable to man. As opposed to wild, e. g. ‘Animals which are neither wild nor heimlich’, etc. ‘Wild animals . . . that are trained to be heimlich and accustomed to men.’ ‘If these young creatures are brought up from early days among men they become quite heimlich, friendly’ etc. - So also: ‘It (the lamb) is so heimlich and eats out of my hand.’ ‘Nevertheless, the stork is a beautiful, heimelich bird.’

(c) Intimate, friendlily comfortable; the enjoyment of quiet content, etc., arousing a sense of agreeable restfulness and security as in one within the four walls of his house. ‘Is it still heimlich to you in your country where strangers are felling your woods?’ ‘She did not feel too heimlich with him.’ ‘Along a high, heimlich, shady path . . ., beside a purling, gushing and babbling woodland brook.’ To destroy the Heimlichkeit of the home,’ ‘I could not readily find another spot so intimate and heimlich as this.’ ‘We pictured it so comfortable, so nice, so cosy and heimlich.’ ‘In quiet Heimlichkeit, surrounded by close walls.’ ‘A careful housewife, who knows how to make a pleasing Heimlichkeit (Häuslichkeit) out of the smallest means.’ ‘The man who till recently had been so strange to him now seemed to him all the more heimlich.’ ‘The protestant land-owners do not feel . . . heimlich among their catholic inferiors.’ ‘When it grows heimlich and still, and the evening quiet alone watches over your cell.’ ‘Quiet, lovely and heimlich, no place more fitted for their rest.’ ‘He did not feel at all heimlich about it.’ - Also, ‘The place was so peaceful, so lonely, so shadily-heimlich.’ ‘The in- and outflowing waves of the current, dreamy and lullaby-heimlich.’ Cf. in especial Unheimlich. Among Swabian Swiss authors in especial, often as a trisyllable: ‘How heimelich it seemed to Ivo again of an evening, when he was at home.’ ‘It was so heimelig in the house.’ ‘The warm room and the heimelig afternoon.’ ‘When a man feels in his heart that he is so small and the Lord so great - that is what is truly heimelig.’ ‘Little by little they grew at ease and heimelig among themselves.’ ‘Friendly Heimeligkeit.’ ‘I shall be nowhere more heimelich than I am here.’ ‘That which comes from afar . . . assuredly does not live quite heimelig (heimatlich, freundnachbarlich) among the people.’ ‘The cottage where he had once sat so often among his own people, so heimelig, so happy.’ ‘The sentinel’s horn sounds so heimelig from the tower, and his voice invites so hospitably.’ ‘You go to sleep there so soft and warm, so wonderfully heim’lig.’ - This form of the word deserves to become general in order to protect this perfectly good sense of the word from becoming obsolete through an easy confusion with II. Cf.: ‘"The Zecks are all ‘heimlich’." (in sense II) "‘Heimlich’? . . . What do you understand by ‘heimlich’?" "Well, . . . they are like a buried spring or a dried-up pond. One cannot walk over it without always having the feeling that water might come up there again." "Oh, we call it ‘unheimlich’; you call it ‘heimlich’. Well, what makes you think that there is something secret and untrustworthy about this family?"’ (Gutzkow).

(d) Especially in Silesia: gay, cheerful; also of the weather.

II. Concealed, kept from sight, so that others do not get to know of or about it, withheld from others. To do something heimlich, i.e. behind someone’s back; to steal away heimlich; heimlich meetings and appointments; to look on with heimlich pleasure at someone’s discomfiture; to sigh or weep heimlich; to behave heimlich, as though there was something to conceal; heimlich love-affair, love, sin; heimlich places (which good manners oblige us to conceal) (1 Sam. v. 6). ‘The heimlich chamber’ (privy) (2 Kings x. 27.). Also, ‘the heimlich chair’. ‘To throw into pits or Heimlichkeiten’. - ‘Led the steeds heimlich before Laomedon.’ - ‘As secretive, heimlich, deceitful and malicious towards cruel masters . . . as frank, open, sympathetic and helpful towards a friend in misfortune.’ ‘You have still to learn what is heimlich holiest to me.’ ‘The heimlich art’ (magic). ‘Where public ventilation has to stop, there heimlich machinations begin.’ ‘Freedom is the whispered watchword of heimlich conspirators and the loud battle-cry of professed revolutionaries.’ ‘A holy, heimlich effect.’ ‘I have roots that are most heimlich. I am grown in the deep earth.’ ‘My heimlich pranks.’ ‘If he is not given it openly and scrupulously he may seize it heimlich and unscrupulously.’ ‘He had achromatic telescopes constructed heimlich and secretly.’ ‘Henceforth I desire that there should be nothing heimlich any longer between us.’ - To discover, disclose, betray someone’s Heimlichkeiten; ‘to concoct Heimlichkeiten behind my back’. ‘In my time we studied Heimlichkeit’ ‘The hand of understanding can alone undo the powerless spell of the Heimlichkeit (of hidden gold).’ ‘Say, where is the place of concealment . . . in what place of hidden Heimlichkeit?’ ‘Bees, who make the lock of Heimlichkeiten’ (i. e. sealing-wax). ‘Learned in strange Heimlichkeiten (magic arts).

For compounds see above, Ic. Note especially the negative ‘un-’: eerie, weird, arousing gruesome fear: ‘Seeming quite unheimlich and ghostly to him.’ ‘The unheimlich, fearful hours of night.’ ‘I had already long since felt an unheimlich, even gruesome feeling.’ ‘Now I am beginning to have an unheimlich feeling.’ . . . ‘Feels an unheimlich horror.’ ‘Unheimlich and motionless like a stone image.’ ‘The unheimlich mist called hill-fog.’ ‘These pale youths are unheimlich and are brewing heaven knows what mischief.’ ‘"Unheimlich" is the name for everything that ought to have remained . . . secret and hidden but has come to light’ (Schelling). - ‘To veil the divine, to surround it with a certain Unheimlichkeit.’ - Unheimlich is not often used as opposite to meaning II (above).