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surreptitiousness

Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state or quality of being surreptitious.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From surreptitious +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • Novelist, historian and drinks-scribbler Bernard DeVoto thanked the speakeasy culture of the '20s for ending all that: "Prohibition sanctioned women to share liquor with men frankly, without surreptitiousness or shame."

    Potions Fit for Wooing 2008

  • Surreptitious flirting is always fun especially now that we are both single so the surreptitiousness is self imposed.

    fragile-liar Diary Entry fragile-liar 2008

  • And more than that, perhaps a variation on the old axiom of whenever you count on surreptitiousness, someone is sure to be looking.

    Death on the River Walk Hart, Carolyn 1999

  • She recalled past incidents, a quick switcharound when she appeared, an air of surreptitiousness, baffled half-suspicions.

    The Stars Are Also Fire Anderson, Poul, 1926-2001 1994

  • She recalled past incidents, a quick switcharound when she appeared, an air of surreptitiousness, baffled half-suspicions.

    The Stars Are Also Fire Anderson, Poul, 1926-2001 1994

  • That movement carried with it a suggestion of surreptitiousness, as if it must be hidden from any watcher.

    Sorceress of the Witch World Norton, Andre 1968

  • Mr Cecil, half hidden behind a cypress and hardly less sorrowfully dark in trappings of full Juanese mourning bought for the occasion and really too amusingly chic for words, scribbled away in his sketch book with ostentatious surreptitiousness and confided to Louvaine that probably this was the best turn La Lane had ever done to anyone in her life …

    Tour de Force Brand, Christianna, 1907- 1955

  • Tess -- anyway, to a fifteen-year-old surreptitiousness seems to add zest to any communication.

    Missy Dana Gatlin

  • Perhaps a kind of public surreptitiousness, a quite open furtiveness, had troubled him.

    Here are Ladies James Stephens 1916

  • There had been in her movement a sort of perfection of surreptitiousness that was animal.

    In the Wilderness Robert Smythe Hichens 1907

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