Dishonest means willing to lie or cheat to get what you want. The mechanic who charges you for a part he never fitted. A dishonest answer on a form, a dishonest estate agent, a dishonest way of counting the votes.
It fits both people and what they do, so there are dishonest men, dishonest deals and that dishonest little pause before a reply. The noun is dishonesty and the adverb is dishonestly, which turns up in courtrooms, as in obtaining money dishonestly. Intellectually dishonest is a common pairing for an argument that ignores what it knows perfectly well. Use it carefully, because it is an accusation rather than a description, and calling a colleague dishonest goes much further than saying they were not quite straight with you. Do not confuse it with dishonourable, which is about shame and broken codes rather than lying.
1adjectivedishonestWilling to lie, cheat or steal.
“The inquiry found that two of the directors had been dishonest.”
synonyms: deceitful, untruthful, crooked
2adjectivedeceptiveMeant to deceive; not truthful.
“It was a dishonest way of presenting the figures.”
synonyms: deceptive, misleading
Dishonest came through Old French deshoneste from Latin dehonestus, and in Middle English it meant dishonourable, shameful rather than untruthful. The build is simple: dis-, the undoing prefix, stuck onto honest. It displaced the native English word unsōþfæst, which stood on sōþ, the old word for truth that still survives inside soothsayer.
Latin
dehonestus
Old French
deshoneste
Middle English
dishoneste — dishonourable
English, today
dishonest
From Middle English dishoneste (“dishonourable”), from Old French deshoneste, from Latin dehonestus. Equivalent to dis- + honest. Displaced native unsōþfæst.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA