IN SECRET

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does in secret mean? 

• IN SECRET (adverb)
  The adverb IN SECRET has 1 sense:

1. in secrecy; not openly

  Familiarity information: IN SECRET used as an adverb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• IN SECRET (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

In secrecy; not openly

Synonyms:

in secret; on the Q.T.; on the QT; secretly

Context example:

they arranged to meet in secret

 Context examples 

I want you to come with me, and to come in secret, to the churchyard at Kingstead.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

He was untamed, wild, and in secret ways her vanity was touched by the fact that he came so mildly to her hand.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I wrote a little something, in secret, and sent it to a magazine, and it was published in the magazine.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

To come among us with professions of openness and simplicity; and such a league in secret to judge us all!

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

We must stand together, without appearing to do so, in secret alliance.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

And even granting some impediment, why was this gentleman to be received by me in secret?

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

And so well was she able to answer her own expectations, that when she joined them at dinner only two hours after she had first suffered the extinction of all her dearest hopes, no one would have supposed from the appearance of the sisters, that Elinor was mourning in secret over obstacles which must divide her for ever from the object of her love, and that Marianne was internally dwelling on the perfections of a man, of whose whole heart she felt thoroughly possessed, and whom she expected to see in every carriage which drove near their house.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

These were vile discoveries; but except for the treachery of concealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to my wife, even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger—when I found that I could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort; that kindly conversation could not be sustained between us, because whatever topic I started, immediately received from her a turn at once coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile—when I perceived that I should never have a quiet or settled household, because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory, exacting orders—even then I restrained myself: I eschewed upbraiding, I curtailed remonstrance; I tried to devour my repentance and disgust in secret; I repressed the deep antipathy I felt.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Emma returned all her attention to her father, saying in secret—I am glad I have done being in love with him.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

I know that if he tells me to come in secret, I must come by wile; by any device to hoodwink—even Jonathan.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)