What does "hole-and-corner" mean?

Conducted in secret; clandestine.

Hole-and-corner

Q: What is a synonym for "hole-and-corner"?

Common synonyms include: back door, backstairs, clandestine, cloak-and-dagger, cloak-and-dagger, covert.

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective

1
Conducted in secret; clandestine.
"The Baron rather frowned on such things, thinking them injudicious at the present stage of affairs, so His Highness had to go about them in a hole and corner manner."

Adjective

1
conducted with or marked by hidden aims or methods wordnet
2
relating to the peripheral and unimportant aspects of life wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

back door backstairs clandestine cloak-and-dagger cloak-and-dagger covert

Example

More examples

"The Baron rather frowned on such things, thinking them injudicious at the present stage of affairs, so His Highness had to go about them in a hole and corner manner."

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