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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.]

tubular leaves are hooded at the top, and frequently contain many insects drowned in the secretion of the leaves.

A registrar or secretary of the faculty in a department of a college, as in a medical, or theological, or scientific department. [U.S.]

Secret; lonely; solitary; dreadful. [Obs.] Shak. -- Dearn"ly, adv. [Obs.] Chaucer.

To break up a camp; to move away from a camping ground, usually by night or secretly. Macaulay.

To translate from secret characters or ciphers into intelligible terms; as, to decipher a letter written in secret characters.

The state or quality of being deep, profound, mysterious, secretive, etc.; depth; profundity; -- opposed to shallowness. Because they had no deepness of earth. Matt. xiii. 5.

Removing obstructions; having power to clear or open the natural ducts of the fluids and secretions of the body; aperient. -- n.

One with whom something is deposited; a depositary. I am the sole depository of my own secret, and it shall perish with me. Junius.

Pertaining to the integument or skin of animals; dermic; as, the dermal secretions.