If you say "private def methodname(args); end", the "private" keyword already takes a symbol for a method name to privatize, so in this case the return of "def

If you say "private def methodname(args); end", the "private" keyword already takes a symbol for a method name to privatize, so in this case the return of "def methodname(args); end" is ":methodname" which then gets passed to "private" and everything magically works.