Word.ws English Dictionary

under the rose

under the rose prepositional phrase: in secret; secretly, privately.

Prepositional phrase

under the rose

  1. (idiomatic) In secret; secretly, privately.
    • ‘If you become the purchaser of the East Lynne estate, Mr Carlyle, it must be under the rose.’1860, Ellen Wood, East Lynne, Penguin 2005, page 10
    • We are organising (but this is quite under the rose as yet) a company for the production of furniture and decoration of all kinds, for the sale of which we are going to open an actual shop!1861, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, quoted by Fiona MacCarthy (2011) in The Last Pre-Raphaelite, Faber, page 130

Examples of under the rose in a sentence

  • "If ever you smoke, my dear aunt (and I am told that many women take a quiet weed under the rose), be very careful how you choose your cigars."1862, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret:
  • But I suppose most of your investigations about this gentleman who's missing are under the rose, eh?"1923, Joseph Smith Fletcher, The Lost Mr. Linthwaite, Grosset & Dunlap, page 196:

Origin of under the rose

Calque of Latin sub rosā.

Questions about under the rose

What does under the rose mean?
Under the rose means in secret; secretly, privately.
How do you use under the rose in a sentence?
"If ever you smoke, my dear aunt (and I am told that many women take a quiet weed under the rose), be very careful how you choose your cigars."
What part of speech is under the rose?
Under the rose is a prepositional phrase.

Words near under the rose in the dictionary

  1. under the mahogany
  2. under the microscope
  3. under the plough
  4. under the pump
  5. under the radar
  6. under the rose
  7. under the rug
  8. under the rule
  9. under the saya
  10. under the sayas
  11. under the sheets

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: under the rose (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-under the rose.ogg.

Cite this entry: “under the rose.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/under_the_rose. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.