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Joined: Oct 2001
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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minstrelling wordsComing 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." 
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Joined: Sep 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I've never used honestness Wordwind and, apart from just now, have never seen it (nor heard it) before.
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old hand
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old hand
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Carpal Tunnel
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Is "rectitude" a synonym for either or both?
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Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 180
member
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member
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 180 |
"...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?
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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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.
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Joined: Sep 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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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?"
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veteran
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veteran
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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.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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..or either honorificabilitudinitatibus, one.
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veteran
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veteran
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Thanks, tsuwm, I must remember to run my spelling checker before posting.
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