Surreptitiously

adv. [f. SURREPTITIOUS a.¹ + -LY².] In a surreptitious manner.

  a.  By ‘surreption’: see SURREPTITIOUS a.¹ 1.

1587–8.  Reg. Privy Council Scot., IV. 260. [Having been] previlie and surreptitiouslie [obtained].

1655.  Fuller, Ch. Hist., IX. ii. § 25. The reasons … were falsely, and surreptitiously suggested to his Holiness.

1689.  Col. Rec. Pennsylv., I. 258. Certain decrees and Orders surreptitiously obtained by Thomas Wollaston.

1823.  Lingard, Hist. Eng., VI. 179. The dispensation … was said to have been surreptitiously obtained.

1876.  Bancroft, Hist. U. S., I. x. 323. All charters and patents which had been surreptitiously obtained.

  b.  In an underhand way; secretly and without authority; clandestinely, by stealth, ‘on the sly.’

1643.  Sir T. Browne (title), A true and full coppy of that which was most imperfectly and Surreptitiously printed before vnder the name of Religio Medici.

1648.  D. Jenkins, Wks., 45. Which confutes their saying that the King got the Seale away surreptitiously.

1656.  Cowley, Misc., Pref. Either surreptitiously before, or avowedly after my death.

1710.  Steele & Addison, Tatler, No. 259, ¶ 1. Surreptitiously taking away the Hassock from under Lady Grave-Airs.

1865.  Athenæum, 28 June, 124/2. James Duke begins the world as an anonymous infant, laid surreptitiously in a basket of clean linen.

1871.  Smiles, Charac., x. (1876), 272. She carried it to church … in the guise of a missal, and read it surreptitiously during the service.

1879.  Froude, Cæsar, viii. 87. The proscription was over, and the list had been closed; but Roscius’s name was surreptitiously entered upon it.

1898.  ‘H. S. Merriman,’ Roden’s Corner, xvi. 174. She surreptitiously touched the animal with her heel.

  † c.  Spuriously. Obs.

1680.  Lond. Gaz., No. 1556/4. That the Book … is falsly, and surreptitiously Ascrib’d to that worthy Person.

  So Surreptitiousness.

1902.  ‘H. S. Merriman,’ Vultures, xxix. The quiet of the streets had a suggestion of surreptitiousness.