hole-and-corner
Americanadjective
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secretive; clandestine; furtive.
The political situation was full of hole-and-corner intrigue.
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trivial and colorless.
She was living a hole-and-corner existence of daily drudgery.
adjective
Etymology
Origin of hole-and-corner
First recorded in 1825–35
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Said one American: "Has an international document ever been ratified in such a hole-and-corner fashion?"
From Time Magazine Archive
You can say or print almost anything so long as you are willing to do it in a hole-and-corner way.
From Time Magazine Archive
The oxygen mask wall continue to put a new face on the secret agent of tradition, marking his release from the hole-and-corner, back-alley deals of history.
From Time Magazine Archive
The further success of She Stoops to Conquer was not likely to propitiate the wretched hole-and-corner cut-throats that infested the journalism of that day.
From Goldsmith English Men of Letters Series by Black, William
For the Gideonites were one of those strange enthusiastic hole-and-corner sects that spring up naturally in the outlying suburbs of great thinking centres.
From Strange Stories by Allen, Grant
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
