Think of confide as handing something over into a pair of hands you have chosen. You are holding something you do not want everyone to have — a worry, a plan, a piece of bad news — and instead of putting it down in public you give it to one person and let go. The whole weight of the word sits in that choice: not who is nearby, but who you trust. Once the picture is hands rather than words, the second, formal use follows easily, because hands can hold money, papers or the care of a shop just as well as a secret.
From the word’s history
The source entry traces confide to Latin confīdere, from con- ('together') plus fidēre ('to trust'), a doublet of faith and fidelity. Trust is literally inside the word, which is why both English uses — telling a secret and handing over something valuable — turn on the same thing.
詞源資料把 confide 追到拉丁文 confīdere：con-（一起）加上 fidēre（信任），並說它和 faith、fidelity 同源。信任這件事就寫在字裡面。這也解釋了英文裡的兩個用法為什麼會長在一起：說出秘密，和交出貴重的東西，靠的都是同一件事。
Wiktionary entry for confide (kaikki extract supplied in this packet: kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:1127888814)
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原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
confideverb/kənˈfaɪd/
- 1
archaicTo have confidence in someone.
- I confide in her judgement in this matter.
- You can confide in him doing the right thing.
- 2
To have confidence in someone.
- I could no longer keep this secret alone; I had to confide in my brother.
- She confided in me about her plan to rob the bank.
- 3
datedTo entrust (something) to the responsibility of someone.
- I confide this mission to you alone.
- 4
To say (something) in confidence.
- After several drinks, I confided my problems to the barman.
- She confided that her marriage had been in trouble for some time.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。