Listen to the author reading this blog post:
by Liz Walter
The other day, I read a report about someone whose crimes were hidden in plain sight. In other words, they should have been easy to spot, but in fact were so obvious that nobody noticed them. We can also say that someone hides (or hides something) in plain sight:
Clues to his feelings were hidden in plain sight in his poems.
The hijackers hid in plain sight, taking flying lessons at private schools.
This led me to think about other words and phrases we use to talk about hiding things, either physical objects or information we don’t want people to know. A general and slightly more formal synonym of ‘hide’ is conceal. We also cover things up, especially information. If you cover your tracks, you hide or destroy any evidence of what you have been doing. If we do something to prevent people from finding the truth about something, we sometimes say that we bury the truth:
Her eyes were concealed behind large sunglasses.
The scandal was quickly covered up.
He attempted to cover up the theft of company funds by creating false expenses.
The company tried to bury the truth about the pollution it had caused.
There are several words connected with hiding something by making it less obvious. For example, soldiers might camouflage themselves or their equipment by using paint or things such as leaves and branches that are the same colour as the surrounding area. Camouflage is also a noun, and can be used more generally, including figuratively to describe hiding the truth about something:
The vehicles were camouflaged to avoid detection.
Her job as a journalist provided good camouflage for spying.
We also use the verbs mask and disguise to talk about preventing something from being seen or noticed. Similarly, we can describe something that hides the truth about what someone is doing, or intending to do, as a smokescreen:
They use a lot of salt in order to mask the poor quality of the food.
She attempted to disguise her upper-class accent.
The enquiry is a smokescreen to distract attention from the real issues.
I’ll finish with three nice phrases. Firstly, if you draw a veil over something, you do not speak about it because you want to hide it or forget about it. Secondly, we sometimes describe something that hides something dishonest or embarrassing as a fig leaf. And finally, the slightly jokey phrase hide/cover a multitude of sins means to prevent people from seeing or finding out about bad or unpleasant things:
I think we should draw a veil over that incident.
Offering financial aid just gives them a fig leaf to hide their guilt.
His charisma covered a multitude of sins.
If you enjoyed this post, look out for my next one, which will be on the opposite topic: finding and discovering things.
‘Hidden in plain sight’ infers a need to have revealed the method but done so in the knowledge that it will not be recognised. In the occult this is known as ‘revaluation of the method’ and by so doing an occult practitioner will be absolved from any bad karma resulting from the action
what about a red herring / keep under wraps?
‘Keep under wraps’ is a great one, thanks. Usually for something you are going to reveal later. And ‘red herring’ is a nice idiomatic phrase, though not usually connected with hiding things deliberately – it’s more something that takes your attention off the correct or most important thing.