Candid means saying what you actually think, even when it is awkward. A friend who tells you the flat is too small before you sign the lease, an interview where a manager admits the plan failed.
You are candid WITH someone ABOUT something, and to be candid is a way of opening a sentence you know will sting: to be candid, the second half was a mess. Photography took the word for pictures caught while nobody is posing — a candid shot, someone laughing mid-sentence. Candid is not rude. It is honesty without cruelty, which is what separates it from blunt. The noun is candour, spelled candor in America, and the adverb is candidly.
1adjectivecandidHonest and direct, even about uncomfortable things.~43%
“She was candid about how much the divorce had cost her.”
synonyms: frank, forthright, open
2adjectivephotograph(of a photograph) taken without the subject posing or knowing.~57%
“The best picture from the wedding is a candid one of the bride laughing.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 7 sentences found in the wild and placed 7 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: frank
Latin
candidus — white
English, today
candid
Borrowed from Latin candidus (“white”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA