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A poll:
How many of you have ever used this word?
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Joined: Jun 2002
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I think I would normally say honesty. so, honestly, or in all honestness, I can't say, but not very often. 
formerly known as etaoin...
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only in the phrase "Good to honestness!"
- elliot (honest) ness
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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.
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Joined: Jan 2004
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veteran
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veteran
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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.
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Joined: Oct 2001
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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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"Honestness" is like "earnestness", jheem: quaint and out-of-date and totally out of sync with today's upwardly mobile, winner-take-all, celebrity culture.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.
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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.
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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.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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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.
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: May 2004
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You know what, Wordminstrel? You are pretty damn good at minstrelling words.
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