under cover

1. Protected by a shelter, as in It began to pour but fortunately we were under cover . [c. 1400]

2. under cover of . Also, under the cover of . Hidden or protected by, as in They sneaked out under cover of darkness , or, as it was put in a sermon in 1751: “Presumption which loves to conceal itself under the cover of humility” (John Jortin, Sermons on Different Subjects ).

Example Sentences

A thief or crew of thieves recently carried out one of the largest art heists in California history, breaking into a storage facility for the Oakland Museum of California under cover of darkness and making off with more than 1,000 precious artifacts.

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A dozen years and four children later, they were both seeing psychiatrists and dallying with other young marrieds in Ipswich, Mass. A decade after that, Updike darkly complained to Martha Bernhard, soon to become his second wife: “My conviction is that Mary has under cover of niceness been doing me pretty dreadful violence—while every violence I’ve done her has been overt and reprehensible.”

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While Abraham turned to the woods to stay under cover, in the alleys of Georgetown, G. and his friend K. found shelter from the rain and clearings in a narrow alcove behind a stairwell on private property.

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Under cover of night, trucks have been regularly dumping rotten produce in an industrial neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles.

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Greenpeace members, pretending to be drunk, smuggled a 120-pound replacement bearing onto the ship by disguising it as a load of beer, then sailed the boat out of the Spanish base at El Ferrol under cover of darkness.

Read more on Slate

Related Words

• confidentially www.thesaurus.com
• covertly 
• stealthily 
• surreptitiously