How to Use furtive in a Sentence

furtive

adjective
  • We exchanged furtive smiles across the table.
  • He cast a furtive glance in our direction.
  • Then there was a furtive crunch, crunch, crunch of footsteps.
    — Bob Cary, Outdoor Life, 15 Oct. 2025
  • Many try to hide their surprise, but their furtive glances say it all.
    — Ron Lieber, New York Times, 11 May 2018
  • Those days of furtive glances of my people and others are over.
    — Walter Mosley, The Hollywood Reporter, 1 Mar. 2018
  • My feeling is that our vices have become more furtive and alone.
    — Dan Brooks, The Atlantic, 3 Nov. 2025
  • Word of the feline's furtive feat spread quickly among the guests.
    — Jim Stingl, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 6 July 2017
  • They're also both tucked away in furtive, but gorgeous, canyons.
    — Adam Lapetina, Travel + Leisure, 18 Mar. 2024
  • To our right, a furtive squirrel buried something in the dirt and dashed off.
    — New York Times, 2 Dec. 2020
  • Some with furtive glances, some outright staring.
    — Ben Mezrich, Vanity Fair, 6 Apr. 2026
  • Thanks to Amazon, my furtive jaunts to the makeup floor are over.
    — Sean Hotchkiss, GQ, 1 Oct. 2017
  • As Pai spoke, there was furtive commotion in the back of the room.
    — Andrew Rice, WIRED, 16 May 2018
  • Nobody talked about the furtive ambition of the swots.
    — Ruby Tandoh, New Yorker, 25 Aug. 2025
  • This time around, the movements have been more furtive, often taking place at night.
    — Melinda Haring, Foreign Affairs, 19 Nov. 2021
  • What’s missing this time around is the furtive hush that once came with owning a knockoff.
    — Maura Judkis, Washington Post, 22 Mar. 2023
  • This was before locking gas caps and flaps, and midnight rustlers put siphons to furtive use.
    — Los Angeles Times, 22 Mar. 2022
  • The small boy wept upon her furtive departure, never to see her again.
    — Donna M. Owens, NBC News, 28 Feb. 2024
  • Stone walls offer small mammals porous volumes in which to live their furtive lives.
    — Robert M. Thorson, Discover Magazine, 9 Dec. 2023
  • Tracking helped to transform a small, furtive ape into a global force.
    — Ben Goldfarb, Smithsonian Magazine, 23 Oct. 2024
  • Two freshman boys, awkward fawns, peered, eyes wide and furtive, at the seniors, the coach, the girls.
    — Michael Powell, New York Times, 6 Dec. 2019
  • But as fears peak, a circle of furtive sellers lurk online, waiting to make a quick buck.
    — NBC News, 28 Feb. 2020
  • That’s why David looks so furtive — because he wasn’t supposed to be doing that.
    — Deborah Vankin, Los Angeles Times, 5 June 2023
  • Blackouts, sirens, mattress on the floor, furtive visitor or ghost.
    — Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker, 18 Apr. 2016
  • The furtive nature of the internet is rife with cloak-and-dagger attacks.
    — Yec, Forbes, 1 Nov. 2021
  • There’s clearly something very furtive that’s been planted in regard to her and Clay.
    — Ethan Shanfeld, Variety, 26 Oct. 2022
  • The furtive glance men make at the women's volleyball on the bar's TV up over there.
    — Esquire, 3 Aug. 2012
  • The smoke from frat boy cigars, unregulated cigarettes and a few furtive reefers rose to the rafters.
    — Doug MacCash, NOLA.com, 6 May 2018
  • Philyaw is a voyeur of a kind, training her gaze on the furtive activities of Black women.
    — The New Yorker, 4 July 2022
  • Hell-o, furtive and weirdly lit hookups are half the fun of reality TV!
    — Emma Specter, Vogue, 28 June 2021
  • The quality is low but in a way that adds to the furtive, legally dicey energy of Anger’s work.
    — Vulture, 24 May 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'furtive.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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