In petto

[…] it was not unfrequent for a good bargain to be struck with him by one or more of the public functionaries, the difference between the sum proposed and accepted being settled against the interests of Mynheer Krause, by the party putting him in possession of some government movement which hitherto been kept in petto.

[…] in its nine members, stand prominently personified indolence and ignorance consummate, solemn pedantry and petulance in petto, upstart self-conceit and high-born arrogance all-blustering, self-sufficiency all smirking, and solid acres in all their stolidity, the remnant of vigour on crutches, and of saintly talent ever dozing—all this is indeed prophetic of wo to the land.

The City of the Sun was a model in petto for the whole earth.

In future you will have the right to dress in red — indeed, you are already cardinal in petto, and you will be proclaimed at the next conclave.

And yet, thou brave Teufelsdröckh, who could tell what lurked in thee? […] The secrets of man’s Life were laid open to thee; thou sawest into the mystery of the Universe, farther than another; thou hadst in petto thy remarkable Volume on Clothes.

Ministers and their Majority had a rejoinder in petto, as we have explained above; but it was one which they could not for shame avow, though they voted on the strength of it.

In the same department as the suspect allographic prefaces we will naturally put many a “Notice from the Publisher [or Editor],” […] which we will meet again and which we have every reason to attribute in petto (but only in petto) to the author.