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The signature of a secretary or other officer to a writing signed by a principal or superior, to attest its authenticity.

let, creek, or bay; a recess in the shore. Vessels which were in readiness for him within secret coves and nooks. Holland.

Covered over; private; hid; secret; disguised. How covert matters may be best disclosed. Shak. Whether of open war or covert guile. Milton

Secretly; in private; insidiously.

Secrecy; privacy. [R.]

Strength; might; secret power. [Obs.] Chaucer.

; to insinuate one's self; to advance or gain influence by servile or obsequious conduct. Secretly crawling up the battered walls. Knolles. Hath crawled into the favor of the king. Shak. Absurd opinions crawl about the world. South.

To move in a stealthy or secret manner; to move imperceptibly or clandestinely; to steal in; to insinuate itself or one's self; as, age creeps upon us. The sothistry which creeps into most of the books of argument. Locke. Of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women. 2. Tim. iii. 6.…

A hard mass, made up of dried secretions blood, or pus, occurring upon the surface of the body.

Hidden; secret; occult. "Her [nature's] more cryptic ways of working." Glanvill.

Secretly; occultly.

One who writes in cipher, or secret characters.

Relating to cryptography; written in secret characters or in cipher, or with sympathetic ink.

The act or art of writing in secret characters; also, secret characters, or cipher.

Secret or enigmatical language. Johnson.

A secret name; a name by which a person is known only to the initiated.

A mucilagenous secretion of certain birds found as the characteristic ingredient of edible bird's-nests.

A flag; an ensign; -- in contempt. [Obs.] Shak. Behind the curtain, in concealment; in secret. -- Curtain lecture, a querulous lecture given by a wife to her husband within the bed curtains, or in bed. Jerrold. A curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffer…

ion; depression; cloud of the mind. Even now, while thus I stand blest in thy presence, A secret damp of grief comes o'er my soul. Addison. It must have thrown a damp over your autumn excursion. J. D. Forbes.

One of a secret association of Mormons, bound by an oath to obey the heads of the church in all things. [U. S.]