I cannot believe this. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to spell ser-up-tish-ish-ly. I was actually reduced to going through the dictionary page by page on any thing I could think of for a close spelling. Nada.
Please tell me I haven’t made this word up. I used it in this sentence tonight:
I think I’ll serruptiously (sp? - duh) take tomorrow off.
So, I call on You…the teeming, the brilliant, the bored. How do you spell it?
trisha
I-T. thank you. 
Actually, it’s surreptitiously.
Main Entry: sur·rep·ti·tious
Pronunciation: "s&r-&p-'ti-sh&s, "s&-r&p-, s&-"rep-
For future similar problems, you should be aware that the Merriam-Webster site, http://www.m-w.com/, allows wild cards (using asterisks).
I entered srpti* and got 29 hits, including the desired word. Had it been spelled syruptishous or sarapticious, I would still have gotten the match with the wild cards I chose. (I would have had far less success if the word had been spelled ceraptysious, of course, but that is why we are allowed more than one try.) It’s a pretty useful tool.
Thank you to all of you!
Tom, both my husband and I bookmarked that (we have different computers) site. I’ll definitely use it in the future.
trisha
Or onelook.com where you can use 500+dictionaries of every type for free.