- 1間諜式的、神秘詭譎的（原指「斗篷與匕首」）
Cloak-and-dagger describes something very secret and mysterious, usually with spies, hidden plans, false names, and danger in the dark. A cloak-and-dagger story is full of agents and secret meetings. A cloak-and-dagger operation is the real-world version: intelligence work, undercover jobs, things governments do not admit in public. The tone can be serious (real spy work) or slightly teasing (when ordinary office secrecy is being mocked as if it were a spy film). It is a set phrase, used as an adjective before a noun: cloak-and-dagger stuff, a cloak-and-dagger affair. Though actually nobody has to wear a cloak or carry a dagger; those are old costume pieces that came to stand for “hidden and armed”. People stretch it for any over-the-top secrecy — a company that will not name a partner, a friend who will only whisper in the — but the home meaning is spies and mystery, not merely “private”.
From the word’s history
Calque of French de cape et d'épée 'of the cloak and the sword', a drama genre; first attested 1840.
仿法文 de cape et d'épée「斗篷與劍」，原指一類戲劇。
組成Copied from French de cape et d'épée, “of the cloak and the sword”. That name was for a kind of drama whose heroes wore cloaks and carried swords. In 1840 an English writer used “cloak and sword”; a year later Dickens wrote “cloak and dagger”, and English kept the dagger (a short knife) instead of the sword. The hyphens mark it as one describing phrase.
原始詞典資料1 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
cloak-and-daggeradj
- 1
Marked by menacing furtive secrecy, often with a melodramatic tint or espionage involved.
- Israel wages cloak-and-dagger war on Iran [headline]
- Two years after ordering the mass internment of German refugees at the start of the second world war, the British government put a small, elite group of them in military uniforms and sent them on a secret cloak-and-dagger mission to occupied Dieppe to snatch an Enigma coding machine from under the Nazis’ noses.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。