CLANDESTINE and SURREPTITIOUS are classic SAT vocabulary words that reappeared as answers to recent vocabulary in context questions. Both words mean secret and therefore hidden from public view. Easy to understand examples include the CLANDESTINE operations of the Navy’s elite Seal Team Six or a spy SURREPTITIOUSLY meeting an informant in a foreign country.
Needless to say, SAT test writers do not use easy examples to illustrate CLANDESTINE or SURREPTITIOUS. For example, in one passage Louisa May Alcott contributed a work to a collection of novels published anonymously between 1876 and 1886. Alcott and the other authors deliberately adopted this CLANDESTINE approach to publishing.
A second recent vocabulary in context question described the SURREPTITIOUS activities of political protestors in Soviet controlled Czechoslovakia. The resisters defied the regime by SURREPTITIOUSLY distributing underground computer games.
CLANDESTINE – secret and not open to public view
SURREPTITIOUS – secret and not open to public view