as in undercover
undertaken or done so as to escape being observed or known by others
I took a clandestine peek at the price tag on the diamond necklace
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Recent Examples of clandestine
Working for a covert intelligence watchdog known as The Orphanage, an internal affairs–style organization created to monitor and police America’s clandestine agencies, Alexander finds himself in turmoil.
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Jane Lacroix, PEOPLE, 27 Dec. 2025
Harge Aird in Carol (2015) God forbid two closeted lesbians have a little fun (okay, emotionally tortured and clandestine fun, but still) without some man coming along to ruin it!
—Emma Specter, Vogue, 25 Dec. 2025
While Panahi’s clandestine shoot —filmming an unsactioned script out in the open in Iran’s capital for the first time since his 2010 arrest–– came with significant difficulties, one of them wasn’t working with non-and-semi professional actors.
—Chris O'Falt, IndieWire, 19 Dec. 2025
Heated Rivalry follows rival professional hockey captains Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) through eight years of competition and clandestine hookups.
—Angelina Mazza, Vulture, 18 Dec. 2025
See All Example Sentences for clandestine
Recent Examples of Synonyms for clandestine
Adjective
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Nine years after foiling a lucrative weapons tradeoff and delivering Roper to Syrian captors, Pine has gone undercover again, eventually reuniting with foreign investigator Angela Burr (Colman) as an MI6 operative.—
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Can the Faithfuls work together or will the Traitors go undercover and pick off the Faithfuls one by one?—
Adjective
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Danish media reported that at least three people with connections to Trump carried out covert influence operations in Greenland.—
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Federal statute mandates the president inform a bipartisan group of eight, high-ranking members of Congress prior to particularly covert operations.—
Adjective
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The request for additional money was made after underground utility and other site placement needs were identified while designing a new floor plan.—
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As Season 2 gets underway, commuters on an underground train are taken hostage, and authorities scramble to save hundreds of lives.—
Adjective
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Get Ready: Katy Perry Has Released a Sneak Peek of Her New Song And the internet has receipts.—
Adjective
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The couple was awarded citizenship in a private ceremony in the capital of Conakry on Friday.—
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Special interests often donate tens of thousands of dollars to lawmakers and gain access to private fundraisers at high-end resorts and other exclusive events.—
Adjective
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But Prayer is not your humdrum, surreptitious post–Cowboy Carter cash-out.—
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Jamian Juliano-Villani’s friezelike painting Women, 2024, offers a surreptitious turn on Marcel Duchamp and Eadweard Muybridge by featuring an ostensibly female figure with too many (and ambiguously gendered) appendages.—
Cite this Entry
“Clandestine.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/clandestine. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.
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