Cloak-and-daggery

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Espionage, secrecy. uncountable

    "[Richard] Moore's climb to the pinnacle of British cloak-and-daggery is a measure of the curious intimacy that sits alongside the ancient enmities that have often described Anglo-Irish relations."

Example

More examples

"[Richard] Moore's climb to the pinnacle of British cloak-and-daggery is a measure of the curious intimacy that sits alongside the ancient enmities that have often described Anglo-Irish relations."

Etymology

cloak-and-dagger + -y

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.