Definition of "lurk"

Even without hovering drones, a lurking assassin, a thumping score and a denouement, the real-life story of Edward Snowden, a rogue spy on the run, could be straight out of the cinema. But, as with Hollywood, the subplots and exotic locations may distract from the real message: America’s discomfort and its foes’ glee.

2013 June 29, “Travels and travails”, in The Economist‎, volume 407, number 8842, page 55

Thus my plight was evil indeed, for I had nothing now to burn to give me light, and knew that 'twas no use setting to grout till I could see to go about it. Moreover, the darkness was of that black kind that is never found beneath the open sky, no, not even on the darkest night, but lurks in close and covered places and strains the eyes in trying to see into it.

1898, J. Meade Falkner, chapter 4, in Moonfleet, London, Toronto, Ont.: Jonathan Cape, published 1934

if we find the sophist lurking, we must round him up by royal command of the argument

2005, Plato, translated by Lesley Brown, Sophist, page 235c

As junior dogsbody, he was lurked with this mission.

2015, Andrew Gordon, The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command

At two p.m. a man had called on him, and had produced one of his advertisements, and had asked him if that was all square—no bobbies on the lurk.

1873, Charles Reade, chapter XXVIII, in A Simpleton: A Story of the Day […], volume III, London: Chapman and Hall, […], page 261

There were enemies on the lurk and time was against him.

1921, George Colby Borley, The Lost Horizon

[…] barked furiously and made at him as at a wolf, and before he could wholly rise from the lurk because of the sudden consternation, […]

1955, John Maxwell Edmonds Longus, Daphnis et Chloe