Wiktionary

honesty

See also: Honesty

English

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the seed pods of honesty
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Etymology

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From Middle English honeste (“honour, integrity”), from Old French honesté (compare modern French honnêteté). By surface analysis, honest +‎ -y. Displaced native Old English sōþfæstnes and non-native Middle English prodonomee, from Old French prodomie. The plant is named so after the visibility of the seeds through the translucent pods.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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honesty (countable and uncountable, plural honesties)

  1. (uncountable, countable) The act, quality, or condition of being honest.
    Synonyms: candor, sincerity; see also Thesaurus:veracity
    academic / artistic / emotional / intellectual honesty
    brutal / devastating / searing honesty
    • c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:
      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,[1]
      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.
    • 1891, Oscar Wilde, The Duchess of Padua:
      […] 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.
    • 1965, George Steiner, “Dying is an Art”, in Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature and the Inhuman, New York: Atheneum, published 1986, page 295:
      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.
    • 2025 February 2, Charles Hugh Smith, Begging Bowl '25: I'm Looking for Two Readers Willing to Help Me Buy a New Thrift-Store Shirt‎[2]:
      I admire unvarnished honesty, which is scarce. And like everything else that's increasingly scarce, it behooves us to hoard our stash.
  2. (uncountable, countable, obsolete) Honor; decency, propriety.
    Synonyms: integrity, rectitude, uprightness; see also Thesaurus:probity
  3. (uncountable, countable, obsolete) Chastity.
    Synonyms: chasteness, continence
  4. (countable) Any of various crucifers in the genus Lunaria, several of which are grown as ornamentals, particularly annual honesty (Lunaria annua).
    • 1940, Rosetta E. Clarkson, Green Enchantments: The Magic Spell of Gardens, The Macmillan Company, page 271:
      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.
    • 2002, Sarah Waters, chapter 6, in Fingersmith, London: Virago, →ISBN, part 1, page 156:
      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

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Derived terms

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Translations

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References

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Middle English

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Noun

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honesty

  1. alternative form of honeste (“honour”)
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