What's the difference between covert and furtive?

Covert


Definition:

  • (v. t.) Covered over; private; hid; secret; disguised.
  • (v. t.) Sheltered; not open or exposed; retired; protected; as, a covert nook.
  • (v. t.) Under cover, authority or protection; as, a feme covert, a married woman who is considered as being under the protection and control of her husband.
  • (a.) A place that covers and protects; a shelter; a defense.
  • (a.) One of the special feathers covering the bases of the quills of the wings and tail of a bird. See Illust. of Bird.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Roshan was the latest victim in what is widely seen as a covert war against the Islamic republic's nuclear programme.
  • (2) Subsequent studies have demonstrated covert face recognition using behavioural tasks.
  • (3) His reports alleged active, sustained and covert collusion to subvert the election which, if confirmed, could constitute treason.
  • (4) The bill, intended to increase and update intelligence agency powers, would create a new framework for covert operations involving conduct that would otherwise breach criminal law.
  • (5) Somehow, despite all this, the Obama administration thinks it can “destroy” Isis, though, as the Post noted , the US government has not been able to destroy al-Qaida or any terrorist group in the last decade “through two wars, thousands of drone strikes and hundreds of covert operations around the world.” The only question now is how far this Forever War against Isis goes.
  • (6) Boko Haram spies spread the rumour that she refused to covert from Christianity to Islam.
  • (7) In general, the two studies show that qualitative characteristics of completely covert generations influence their impact on estimates of the frequency of external events.
  • (8) The drug subculture, the addict's family, and a methadone clinic all covertly elicit and reinforce this transformation maintained by the myth that the addict's is "out of control".
  • (9) A series of experiments were conducted on three severe prosopagnosic patients in an attempt to understand better this phenomenon known as covert face recognition, the conditions for its occurrence, and its functional locus.
  • (10) "Instead of actually fighting a conventional war, western powers and their allies appear to be relying on covert war tactics to try to delay and degrade Iran's nuclear advancement," Theodore Karasik, a security expert at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis told Associated Press.
  • (11) The repurposing of the devices of unwitting users in foreign jurisdictions for covert attacks in the interests of one country’s national priorities is a dangerous precedent – contrary to international norms, and in violation of widespread domestic laws prohibiting the unauthorised use of computing and networked systems,” they conclude.
  • (12) Investigations mostly failed to show overt or covert face recognition, but NR performed at an above-chance level in selecting the familiar face on a task requiring a forced-choice between a familiar and an unfamiliar face.
  • (13) The covert self-evaluations were assumed to represent at internalization of early experiences of predominantly positive or negative social reinforcement from adult socializing agents.
  • (14) Richy Thompson, director of public affairs and policy at the British Humanist Association, welcomed the study, but said covert online access to abortion pills wasn’t enough.
  • (15) At the same time, by achieving a state of misery through following her mother's orders, she exposed her as ridiculous, and thus covertly discharged considerable aggression.
  • (16) Covert and overt depression was as frequent in the hysterectomized group as in the control group.
  • (17) The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said at Smith's tribunal that it believed some of the information held by the covert organisation and accessible to companies that subscribed to the service "could only have been supplied by the police or the security services".
  • (18) We now report that enhancement of calcium current in the peptidergic bag cell neurons of Aplysia by protein kinase C occurs through a different mechanism, the recruitment of a previously covert class of calcium channel.
  • (19) After all, the most basic freedom of all is the freedom to walk the streets unharmed and to sleep safe in our beds at night.” Parliament will soon debate the government’s first national security legislation bill to expand the powers of intelligence agencies and criminalise disclosure by any person of covert “special intelligence agencies”.
  • (20) It recommended that all radio communications taking place during undercover firearms operations should be recorded and covert armed response vehicles should be fitted with in-car data-recording systems.

Furtive


Definition:

  • (a.) Stolen; obtained or characterized by stealth; sly; secret; stealthy; as, a furtive look.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The judge said Tamir was given “little if any time” to respond to any commands from the officers, that his arms were not raised, and that he made no “furtive movement”.
  • (2) Turnbull later shrugged off the concern as there was nothing furtive about the deal, and noted it was reported by Australian media.
  • (3) Back then the town’s Kurdish character was furtive and suppressed.
  • (4) For the 30 years I have followed Spurs to away games – in pubs, around tube stations, on the streets around the ground and within Stamford Bridge itself, the venom, ignorance and breathtaking casualness of Chelsea fans’ references to Jews, Auschwitz, the Holocaust and foreskins, often accompanied by a hissing simulation of gas chambers, is simply shocking – not least because it goes unchallenged by police, stewards or the club itself, bar a token reference furtively hidden away in the match-day programme.
  • (5) The page name could have been better translated to "freedoms on the quiet", since the word "yavashaki" [furtive in Persian] also incorporates the word "yavash" meaning gently.
  • (6) Part-timers, meanwhile, are envied for having one foot in the playground and one in the office, but worry secretly about failing to keep up with either of them: skidding late into the school pick-up, still furtively sending emails on our phones.
  • (7) Abroad, he had perhaps been best known for his furtive motorcycle tryst with his actor lover, Julie Gayet, and his messy, public breakup with his First Lady, Valérie Trierweiler.
  • (8) Nearby, guards waited furtively at the entrance to the Islamic mourning tent for Sheikh Alman al-Shijah, blown apart last Friday by a bomb placed under his car.
  • (9) A small crowd grows larger, and furtive comments become denunciations as anger pours forth against Nkunda's National Congress for People's Defence.
  • (10) As I was talking his hand started creeping over my leg in a really furtive way.
  • (11) I had always loved writing the book: from the first furtive soundings of disaffected employees of Big Pharma in London, to forages among the industry’s white chimneys of Basel, and finally to the tribal villages of Kenya, where young mothers who could barely read were being bamboozled into signing “consent forms” that made guinea pigs of their own children.
  • (12) He said French troops had come up against "furtive firing" and had briefly fired back, but he said these exchanges had now stopped.
  • (13) The total number present on the island has been extremely difficult to determine due to the rugged terrain and the furtiveness of the monkeys.
  • (14) In his documentation of this furtive Islam , Degiorgis has also highlighted the ways in which a community under siege becomes resilient and collectively defiant in the face of creeping oppression.
  • (15) A politically feeble Japan, that once imperial Asian power, shelters furtively behind its US-made anti-missile batteries.
  • (16) By 1971, about 100 deserters were living furtively in a district of Saigon nicknamed "Soul Alley", beside Tan Son Nhut airport.
  • (17) All the druidic mumbo-jumbo about the Elevating Principle and the Straight Line reminds me of stuff I furtively read in my father's books on freemasonry.
  • (18) And given that the net effectively lowered what one might call the "shame threshold" (instead of having to sneak furtively into a "specialist" shop, punters could view from the comfort and privacy of their own homes), the internet undoubtedly expanded the market for commercial porn.
  • (19) Though he often shrank snail-like into stay-at-home furtiveness, the town that made him - Salem, Massachusetts - (as any visitor can still see) faces the dark, windy ocean, and it was this Hawthorne would stare at when he worked in its Custom House from 1846-49.
  • (20) When they do, it is in a slightly furtive way, almost in whispers.