honesty

Etymology

From Middle English honeste (“honour, integrity”), from Old French honesté (compare modern French honnêteté) (honest + -y); the plant, from the visibility of the seeds through the translucent pods. Displaced native Old English sōþfæstnes.

noun

1. (uncountable, countable) The act, quality, or condition of being honest.
   academic / artistic / emotional / intellectual honesty
   brutal / devastating / searing honesty
   1787, George Colman, Junior, Inkle and Yarico, London: G.G.J. & J. Robinson, Act 2, p. 45, O give me your plain dealing Fellows Who never from honesty shrink; Not thinking on all they shou’d tell us, But telling us all that they think.
   To those who knew her and to the greatly enlarged circle who were electrified by her last poems and sudden death, she had come to signify the specific honesties and risks of the poet’s condition. 1965, George Steiner, “Dying is an Art”, in Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature and the Inhuman, New York: Atheneum, published 1986, page 295
2. (uncountable, countable, obsolete) Honor; decency, propriety.
3. (uncountable, countable, obsolete) Chastity.
   c. 1625, John Fletcher, The Fair Maid of the Inn, Act V, Scene 1, in Alexander Dyce (editor), The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, New York: Appleton, 1890, Volume 2, p. 669, … Oh, these vild women, That are so ill preservers of men’s honours, They cannot govern their own honesties!
4. (countable) Any of various crucifers in the genus Lunaria, several of which are grown as ornamentals, particularly Lunaria annua.
   Various measures were taken to avoid it, most popular being the suspension of certain herbs and tree branches over the doorways of dwellings and stables. Commonly used greenery were tansy, honesty, garlic, St. John's Wort, mountain ash, roadside verbena. 1940, Rosetta E. Clarkson, Green Enchantments: The Magic Spell of Gardens, The Macmillan Company, page 271
   She thought a minute, then stepped nimbly back into her cottage; and what she came out with at last was, a sprig of dry leaves, round as shillings, white as paper, quivering on a few thin stalks that looked ready to snap. It was honesty. 2002, Sarah Waters, Fingersmith, Virago Press (2005), page 156