behind closed doors

1. In secret, privately. For example, The nominating committee always meets behind closed doors, lest its deliberations become known prematurely. Also see behind the scenes.

Example Sentences

Wearing an orange jumpsuit, Proctor, 60, leaned over several times to whisper to his attorney but otherwise said little during the hearing, a portion of which was held behind closed doors.

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“You see all these ICE agents walking around with masks, the whole point is the idea of being able to hide their identity. But for Hoover, the whole point is that you didn’t even know there were the people doing these sorts of things. The idea is that all this was done behind closed doors,” Gallagher said.

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"I'm really, really good at hiding it, but behind closed doors it's sheer panic," she explains.

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The experiences of children spending a lot of time online, some in troubled families behind closed doors, others left with serious mental health implications, have become painstakingly clear through the evidence of the last few weeks.

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The first test, in Barcelona on 26-30 January, is behind closed doors because the teams wanted to get their heads around their first running of the new engines without the prying eyes of the media.

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