covertness


Also found in: Thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

cov·ert

 (kō′vərt, kō-vûrt′, kŭv′ərt)
adj.
1. Not openly practiced, avowed, engaged in, accumulated, or shown: covert military operations; covert funding for the rebels. See Synonyms at secret.
2. Covered or covered over; sheltered.
3. Law Being married and therefore protected by one's husband.
n.
1. A covering or cover.
2.
a. A covered place or shelter; hiding place.
b. Thick underbrush or woodland affording cover for game.
3. Zoology One of the small feathers covering the bases of the longer feathers of a bird's wings or tail.

[Middle English, from Old French, from past participle of covrir, to cover; see cover.]

cov′ert·ly adv.
cov′ert·ness n.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Noun1.covertness - the state of being covert and hidden
concealment, privateness, secrecy, privacy - the condition of being concealed or hidden
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.

covertness

noun
The habit, practice, or policy of keeping secrets:
The American Heritage® Roget's Thesaurus. Copyright © 2013, 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
References in periodicals archive ?
Irony, humour, pastiche and theatricality murmur through the exhibit, which in certain sections is purposely claustrophobic; Bolton wanted to deliver the sense of secrecy and covertness that surrounded camp's origins.
As Carson explains, covertness and reactive secrecy are driven by the need to control escalation and avoid large-escalation conflict (pg.
For me, the Aptus offers a level of covertness that I like.
The foregrounding of the woman and the covertness of the man suggest that the souteneur does not desire visibility to the same length that the woman portrayed does.
Research focused on covert marketing usually "measures consumers' persuasion knowledge when covertness was disclosed, a covert cue was presented, or a different sponsorship motive was perceived" (Ham et al.
A sense of surveillance, censure and attack on the one hand, and of covertness, dread and paranoia on the other, permeate these episodes, casting the characters in a vulnerable Us versus almighty Them faceoff.
A different interpretation of the same passage is that Aristotle refers to the "covertness" of the Homeric narrator: the poet says little in his own voice in the sense that he rarely interferes in the story (he shows rather than tells)--apart from the proem and the invocations of the Muse, the narrator is invisible.
The high prevalence of misconceptions could be explained by cultural covertness regarding sex [3] and lack of poor health literacy in curricula [4] and samples were taken from clinical populations, single centered study, preexisting myths [5, 6], religious misperceptions [3, 5], and other such factors.
The idea of "being discreet" may mean undertaking "speech and actions" designed to "avoid embarrassment," maintain "confidentiality" or remain "unobtrusive." (73) Thus notions of secrecy, covertness, and selective acknowledgement as "codes of behaviour" are part of this mimetic meaning.