A poll:

How many of you have ever used this word?

I think I would normally say honesty. so, honestly, or in all honestness, I can't say, but not very often.

only in the phrase "Good to honestness!"
- elliot (honest) ness

Google (now a billion dollars richer) offers 1210 web pages on which this word -- honestness -- appears .. so, for descriptivists, this is ample evidence that somebody is using it.

As it appears to be entirely synonymous with "honesty" there seems little reason for its existence. In all the stuff indexed by Bartleby.com, there is not one reference to this word.


I don't use it. I wouldn't use it ... except, perhaps to create a parallelism between it and another word ending the same way, e.g. earnestness and honestness.

I don't believe I've ever used it, but then I am old and forgetful. I'd understand what somebody was saying if they used it.

I am old and forgetful. I'd understand what somebody was saying if they used it.

"Honestness" is like "earnestness", jheem: quaint and out-of-date and totally out of sync with today's upwardly mobile, winner-take-all, celebrity culture.

"Honestness" is something you can't even buy today, even if you 'show me the money'.

You can only rent it.

Some words fall out of fashion because the values they describe fall out of fashion.

for descriptivists, this is ample evidence that somebody is using it.

I suppose, if someone is using it, a descriptivist would be remiss in saying that nobody was using it. Shouldn't stop a prescriptivist from saying that anyone caught using it should be drawn, quartered, and cast into the pits of Gehenna.

On the other hand, I could easy imagine a fine distinction between honesty and honestness. Not that we could get any two people to agree on what that distinction was, mind.

Faldage, you bring up the point I've been thinking about all day: the distinction between the two given the fact that their definitions are identical.

I don't use honestness--at least, until today. In fact, when I first saw honestness in a word list, I thought, "That's one I'd have to check to make sure it's legit."

Anyway, now that I realize there are those who are using it, I've wondered about distinctions between the two--and wonder whether honesty is more active than honestness and that honestness is more of a mind set--or a state of heart or intent. Honesty is the attribute after-the-fact of doing--and honestness is more of... Oh, blarney! And I say that in all blarnestness.

I wonder whether honesty is more active than honestness and that honestness is more of a mind set--or a state of heart or intent.

"Honestness" is a fastness, like "earnestness", like the romantic ideal of Elizabethan love, Wordwind.

It is not temporal, or abridgeable, or conditional, like "honesty", which in our society is nothing more than a soluble pledge, whether to a lover or an employer or a friend or to someone who trusts us.

It is unconditional.

It is a duty. No, it is beyond duty.

It is a fastness to a principle, not just to a person.

A fastness which is unshakeable, which cannot be shaken; a fastness which is tethered to something which is absolute, which is beyond understanding, and beyond questioning.

Like a faith. But not a faith. More like "honor". Or "nobility".

Not courage because it is more indomitable than courage.

Such a state of mind, such a fastness, such an earnestness, is hardly within the ken of our culture today, Wordwind.

You know what, Wordminstrel? You are pretty damn good at minstrelling words.

minstrelling words

Coming from you, especially, Amemeba, that is a high compliment.

You know, as I thought about this further, there is a profound difference between "honesty" and "honestness", conspicuously evident in this aphorism:

"Honesty is the best policy."

If you substitute the word "honestness" for "honesty", the aphorism is transformed:

"Honestness is the only policy."

I've never used honestness Wordwind and, apart from just now, have never seen it (nor heard it) before.

..and don't intend to.

Is "rectitude" a synonym for either or both?

"...e.g. earnestness and honestness"

Hey, shouldn't that be "earnestine"? And what is the difference between "impotence" and "impotency"? I'm sure there's some hideous joke in there someplace but I haven't figured it out yet. Anyway, I've also seen "competence" and "competency". And why should the words "crisp" and "crispy" both exist?

Rectitude would be fairly synonymous with both honestness and honesty because rectitude is that quality of character that is consequential to being honest and honorable. Rectitude, I would say, is based absolutely upon not only attitude, but also upon attitude that actively governs honorable acts.

Hey, shouldn't that be "earnestine"?

Nope. Ernestine was the telephone operator, portrayed by Lily Tomlin on Laugh In, who sat waiting for a customer to answer while she said "One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy...." Then, when the person answered, she'd ask "A gracious good morning to you...Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?"

And why should the words "crisp" and "crispy" both exist?

Yes, but both crispness and crispiness exist, too. (Crisp is also a Latin loanword.) Why do people feel that honesty somehow has an injunction against its cousin honestness, which breaks none of the morphological rules of English? Is it because the French brought us honnêteté (from the earlier Latin honestas?). And why is honestly (mixing Latin root and Saxon suffix) perfectly OK? (Did honestment just not make it over the channel?) And closely related, there's honor, honorable, and honorableness.

..or either honorificabilitudinitatibus, one.

Thanks, tsuwm, I must remember to run my spelling checker before posting.

it's like I says in my dictionary's disclaimer, "You try spell-checking this stuff!"

honorificabilitudinatibus

honorificabilitudinatatibus

Ænigma suggests honoring.