cloaked

1. 1
   verb

   Past tense and past participle of cloak.

   The company cloaked its losses in vague accounting language.

   The starship cloaked seconds before the enemy fleet came within range.

   Note

   Cloak is a regular verb, so one spelling serves as the simple past (fog cloaked the bay) and as the past participle (the bay had been cloaked in fog for hours). In science fiction the verb works with or without an object: a crew cloaked the ship, or the ship cloaked and vanished from the enemy's screens.

2. 2
   adjective

   Covered over or hidden from view, or disguised so that the truth is not seen.

   The whole project was cloaked in secrecy until the launch.

   By dawn the valley lay cloaked in a thick gray fog.

   Similarshrouded, veiled, wrapped, hidden, concealed

   Note

   The construction to know is cloaked in, followed by whatever does the hiding: cloaked in mystery, cloaked in secrecy, cloaked in fog. It keeps the picture of someone wrapped in a cloak, so the thing described is covered all over rather than locked away. It is usually not compared; writers thicken the cover instead: cloaked in thick fog, cloaked in total secrecy.

3. 3
   adjective

   Wearing a cloak, the long outer garment that hangs loosely from the shoulders.

   A cloaked figure stood motionless at the end of the alley.

   The cloaked riders galloped through the storm toward the castle.

4. 4
   adjective

   In science fiction, made invisible by advanced technology.

   The cloaked starship slipped past the enemy patrol undetected.

   Not even the station's best sensors could find the cloaked vessel.

   Note

   Science fiction stretched the older idea of hiding under a cover into technology: a cloaked ship is not disguised as something else but cannot be seen at all, by eye or by sensor. The adjective names the state the ship is in, and it usually stands before the noun, as in the cloaked vessel, or after be, as in the ship was cloaked.

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