honesty
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: derivation
Etymology: From Middle English honeste (“honour, integrity”), from Old French honesté (compare modern French honnêteté) (honest + -y); the plant, from the visibility of the seeds through the translucent pods. Displaced native Old English sōþfæstnes; and non-native Middle English prodonomee, from Old French prodomie.
Base: honest
Affixes: -y
Inflected forms:
form: honesties
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: The act, quality, or condition of being honest.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: academic / artistic / emotional / intellectual honesty
brutal / devastating / searing honesty
There’s no trust, / No faith, no honesty in men; all perjured, / All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.
1787, George Colman, Junior, Inkle and Yarico, London: G.G.J. & J. Robinson, Act 2, p. 45,
O give me your plain dealing Fellows
Who never from honesty shrink;
Not thinking on all they shou’d tell us,
But telling us all that they think.
[…] Are you honest, boy? / Then be not spendthrift of your honesty, / But keep it to yourself; in Padua / Men think that honesty is ostentatious, so / It is not of the fashion.
To those who knew her and to the greatly enlarged circle who were electrified by her last poems and sudden death, she had come to signify the specific honesties and risks of the poet’s condition.
I admire unvarnished honesty, which is scarce. And like everything else that's increasingly scarce, it behooves us to hoard our stash.
gloss: Honor; decency, propriety.
pos: noun
tags: countable
obsolete
uncountable
examples: Have ye no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night?
Fellovves in armes faithfull and valiant, / I thanke you for your paines and honeſties, […]
[…] that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
gloss: Chastity.
pos: noun
tags: countable
obsolete
uncountable
examples: […] spend all I have; only give me so much of your time in exchange of it, as to lay an amiable siege to the honesty of this Ford’s wife […]
c. 1625, John Fletcher, The Fair Maid of the Inn, Act V, Scene 1, in Alexander Dyce (editor), The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, New York: Appleton, 1890, Volume 2, p. 669,
[…] Oh, these vild women,
That are so ill preservers of men’s honours,
They cannot govern their own honesties!
gloss: Any of various crucifers in the genus Lunaria, several of which are grown as ornamentals, particularly annual honesty (Lunaria annua).
pos: noun
tags: countable
examples: Various measures were taken to avoid it, most popular being the suspension of certain herbs and tree branches over the doorways of dwellings and stables. Commonly used greenery were tansy, honesty, garlic, St. John's Wort, mountain ash, roadside verbena.
She thought a minute, then stepped nimbly back into her cottage; and what she came out with at last was, a sprig of dry leaves, round as shillings, white as paper, quivering on a few thin stalks that looked ready to snap. / It was honesty.
Antonyms: dishonesty
Derived words: annual honesty
honesty bar
honesty box
honesty is the best policy
honesty jar
in all honesty
intellectual honesty
maiden's honesty
overhonesty
unhonesty
Translations: