Honesty is telling the truth when a lie would be easier. Owning up to the scratch on the car, telling a friend the haircut is not working, handing back the extra change at the till.
It is the noun of honest, and it reaches past speech to cover not stealing and not cheating — the honesty of a shopkeeper who could short-change you and does not. The phrases to keep: in all honesty, complete honesty, brutal honesty, and the proverb honesty is the best policy. The h at the start is silent, so the word opens like 'on'. The adverb honestly does double duty: 'he answered honestly' is plain, but 'Honestly!' on its own is exasperation and 'honestly, I don't mind' is just an intensifier. There is also a garden plant called honesty, whose flat seed pods turn so papery in autumn that you can see the seeds straight through them.
1nounhonestyThe quality of telling the truth and not cheating or stealing.
“His honesty cost him the promotion, and he never regretted it.”
synonyms: truthfulness, integrity, candour
2noungardenA garden plant with purple flowers and flat, translucent seed pods.
“She dried a bunch of honesty and stood it in a jug all winter.”
honesty is a moral quality.
Honesty came through Old French honeste from a word about honour, and Middle English honeste meant honour and integrity together — reputation as much as truthfulness. English already had a native word for it, sothfaestnes, truth-fast, and the French import pushed it out. The garden plant took the name later, for those seeds you can see right through the pod.
Old French
honesté
Middle English
honeste — honour, integrity
English, today
honesty
From Middle English honeste (“honour, integrity”), from Old French honesté (compare modern French honnêteté). by surface analysis, honest + -y. Displaced native sōþfæstnes and non-native prodonomee, from prodomie. The plant is named so after the visibility of the seeds through the translucent pods.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA