honey
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈhʌni/
rhymes: -ʌni
Forms: form: honeyer
form: honier
form: honeyest
form: honiest
form: hony
form: hunney
form: hunny
Etymology: From Middle English hony, honi, from Old English huniġ, from Proto-West Germanic *hunag, from Proto-Germanic *hunagą (compare Saterland Frisian Hunich, West Frisian hunich, German Low German Honnig, German Honig), from earlier *hunangą (compare North Frisian honning, hönning, West Frisian huning, Dutch honing, Swedish honung), from Proto-Indo-European *kn̥h₂onk-o-s, from *kn̥h₂ónks.
Cognate with Middle Welsh canecon (“gold”), Latin canicae pl (“bran”), Tocharian B kronkśe (“bee”), Albanian qengjë (“beehive”), Ancient Greek κνῆκος (knêkos, “safflower”), Northern Kurdish şan (“beehive”), Northern Luri گونج (gonj, “bee”), Finnish hunaja.
Senses: examples: text: So work the honey-bees, / Creatures that by a rule in nature teach / The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
ref: 1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:
text: Dim as the forming of / Dew in the warming of / Moonlight, they light on the petals; / All is revealed to them; / All!—from the sunniest / Tips to the honiest / Heart, whence they yield to them / Spice, through the darkness that settles.
ref: 1907, Madison Cawein, “One Day and Another: A Lyrical Eclogue”, in The Poems of Madison Cawein, volumes II (New World Idylls and Poems of Love), Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, page 8:
text: “I say,” it said, “don’t gran’ma make the hunkiest frosted cookies, though?” / “My, yes, an’ gran’pa’s bees the honiest honey?” flashed back from Station Mary.
ref: 1911 January 3, “[The Children’s Corner] Wireless Telegraphy”, in The Inglenook, volume XIII, number 1, Elgin, Ill.: Brethren Publishing House, page 19, column 1:
text: moll / Even to the least detail of love and duty / To win the dalliance of her majesty. / king hamlet / Dalliance? / moll / ’T is the honiest word that sticks / On my lord Osric’s tongue, like a dayfly’s wing / On a toad’s tongue-tip.
ref: 1950, Percy MacKaye, The Mystery Of Hamlet, King of Denmark, or What We Will: A Tetralogy by Percy MacKaye, in Prologue to The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, by William Shakespeare, London: The Bodley Head, published 1952, page 397:
text: Its perfume is variously described as ‘divine’ and reminiscent of nuts. Of grapes it is the grapiest; of honey the honiest.
ref: 1962, Harper’s Bazaar, volume 95, page 204:
text: The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad speaks of the ātman as the honey (madhu) and as the “honiest” of all the honeys.
ref: 1985, P.T. Raju, Structural Depths of Indian Thought, Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, →ISBN, pages 407–408:
text: Have you tried Fuller's(?) organic honey beer? It's much, much nicer than Waggledance. Honeyer. Mmmm.
ref: 2004 March 13, Janet McKnight, “Beer”, in uk.misc (Usenet), archived from the original on 21 Feb 2024:
glosses: Involving or resembling honey.
examples: text: Then I looked close at the scalp he stroked, which was of the silkiest blonde. For a moment I was sure it come from Olga’s dear head, and reckoned also he had little Gus’s fine skull-cover someplace among his filthy effects, the stinking old savage, living out his life of murder, rapine, and squalor, and I almost knifed him before I collected myself and realized the hair was honeyer than my Swedish wife’s.
ref: 1964, Thomas Berger, “My Indian Wife”, in Little Big Man, New York, N.Y.: The Dial Press, →LCCN, page 214:
glosses: Of a pale yellow to brownish-yellow color, like most types of honey.
examples: text: But he answered the question with the honiest—Bohemian honey—of smiles: […]
ref: 1876, Stephen J[oseph] Mac Kenna, Handfast to Strangers: A Novel, volume III, London: Chapman and Hall, […], page 137:
text: Mais il se ravisa et revint dire, de son air bonhomme : « Écoutez donc Lantier, j’ai besoin d’un homard…[…] »
ref: 1886, Émile Zola, unknown translator, chapter II, in His Masterpiece? (L’Œuvre.) Or, Claude Lantier’s Struggle for Fame. A Realistic Novel., London: Vizetelly & Co., […], page 54:
text: No man has any business to say that his boy is honier than he was,—or is.
ref: 1908 January 25, Rose Melville, “Sis Hopkins’ Sayings”, in The Sandusky Star-Journal, Sandusky, Oh., page twelve:
text: “Oh, my dears, I must tell you this. At dinner the other evening I made a really truly growly belted earl squirm. I had told him how much I liked a little speech he had made, when he turned on me in his most growly belted early manner. / “‘Do you say that, Lady Polly,’ he snorted, ‘because it is the truth or because it is the correct thing to say?’ / “‘Not being an earl,’ I replied in my honeyest voice, ‘I don’t recognise any difference between the two.’
ref: 1927 November 9, Punch, or The London Charivari, London: […] [T]he Office, […], page 512, columns 2–3:
text: “We’ve placed your arms in that position, Miss Day,” I said in my honeyest voice, “because it’s the safest just in case you have a fracture.[…]”
ref: 1957, William J[ulius] Lederer, Ensign O’Toole and Me, New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., →LCCN, page 177:
text: Then this guy stalled at my desk, fishing for his wallet, giving me the honeyest smile.
ref: 1970, Cal, volumes 33–35, page 1:
text: Then upside down by her tail she swings / And sings in the honeyest voice I’ve heard: / “One day I will grow a pair of wings / And become a furry Hummingbird.”
ref: 2001, Adrian Mitchell, Zoo of Dreams, London: Orchard Books, →ISBN, page 37:
text: It was Neezer who had found Sally for us at his church, where, he testified, the woman sang “with the honeyest voice you ever heard. If her singing don’t make the Lord happy, nothing does.”
ref: 2005, Lee Siegel, Who Wrote the Book of Love?, Chicago, Ill.; London: The University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 17:
text: After hundreds of listens, Odessey and Oracle still sounds like a paragon of poignant psychedelic pop, rendered in orchestral splendor and adorned with indelible melodies that are to cry for, sung in the honeyest of tones by the angelically melancholy [Colin] Blunstone.
ref: 2017 April 19, Dave Segal, “The Zombies: Odessey and Oracle 50th Anniversary”, in The Stranger, volume 26, number 34, Seattle, Wash., page 37, column 3:
text: MEETHAN MADHU NE MEETHA MEHULA RE LOL, ETHI MEETHEE TE MORI MAT RE, JANANEE NI JOD SAKHI !
ref: 2018 March–April, J. K. Khuman, “Gender, Class, and Caste Consciousness with Special Reference to Indian Literature”, in Scholarly Research Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies, volume 5, number 44, →ISSN, page 9756:
text: “Thanks honey, I love you.” / Kaya, “I like it when you say, honey.” / “I like it too, but you are honeyer than honey.”
ref: 2023, David Samir Yaghnam, “But how can I, look at me”, in Adam and Eve, This Age!, [Lighthouse Point, Fla.: Visionary Book Writers], →ISBN, page 710:
glosses: Honey-sweet.