A covering that serves to conceal or shelter something

Usage examples of covert.

During the 1990s, tension sometimes arose, as it did in the effort against al Qaeda, between policymakers who wanted the CIA to undertake more aggressive covert action and wary CIA leaders who counseled prudence and making sure that the legal basis and presidential authorization for their actions were undeniably clear.

In reality, there was no such thing as an avenging blowfish, which made it a perfect name for a covert baseball team preparing for a game that might not exist.

Not that he had begun to condemn himself for his hardness to the woman who, whatever her fault, yet honored him by confessing it, or to bemoan her hard fate to whom a man had not been a hiding-place from the wind, a covert from the tempest of life, a shadow-shelter from the scorching of her own sin.

In the first two hours after their escape they had made good progress on the way to London, un pursued Every now and then, Deb had led into a covert and sat Cec down on a log or stone, and pushed herself through the thickest to observe the road and listen.

He fretted gloomily about all the next day, riding alone in the Park, driving with his sister, drinking and gambling at the club again and smiling cynically to himself at the covert glances his acquaintances exchanged.

If the King crossed Evenlode and entered the forest it would be by the bridge of Charlbury, for the best harbourage for deer lay to the west of Leafield in the thick coverts above Shipton.

His eyes widened in feigned surprise and he gave a not so covert glance at Letcher before looking at his partner.

The larch plantations would be a pale mist on the hillsides, the hazel coverts would be budding, plovers would be everywhere, and water ouzels would be flashing their white breasts among the stones.

Bryan demurely held the rein, and hardly hazarded a look or covert joke, as with a pace that put the poney to a trot, he led the Prince through the narrow streets to the western gate.

I felt quite diminutive and vulnerable under his gaze, rather as I imagine small forest creatures must have felt when, far from the safety of their dens and with no covert nearby in which to shelter, they realized they were being eyed by my raptorial juika-bloth.

An intelligence officer assigned to the Office of Management Analysis, he had met McCoy during a covert operation staged by Banning in China before the war.

While he looked around for another horse to steal, Merel hurried out of the covert carrying what looked like an axe-handle.

This was generally an eighteenth-century frame of mind, which was in part to disappear in the covert misogyny of later nineteenth-century writers.

From these clear coverts high and cool I see How every time with every time is knit, And each to all is mortised cunningly, And none is sole or whole, yet all are fit.

CIA must bring presidentially authorized covert action Findings and Memoranda of Notification to the Intelligence committees, and it must detail its failures.