Library / English Dictionary

DISCREETLY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (adverb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

With discretion; prudently and with wise self-restraint

Example:

I sent for the sergeant of the platoon both men were in and asked him to try to find out discreetly what lay behind this

Classified under:

Adverbs

Antonym:

indiscreetly (without discretion or wisdom or self-restraint)

Pertainym:

discreet (marked by prudence or modesty and wise self-restraint)

Credits

 Context examples: 

It was evident that to his intensely aristocratic nature this discussion of his intimate family affairs with a stranger was most abhorrent, and that he feared lest every fresh question would throw a fiercer light into the discreetly shadowed corners of his ducal history.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to New York—or not quite together, for Mrs. Wilson sat discreetly in another car. Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

When I came back they had disappeared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of Simon Called Peter—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn't make any sense to me.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)