Honesty, n.
Etymology: [OE. honeste, oneste, honor, OF. honesté, onesté (cf. F. honnêteté), L. honestas. See Honest, a.]
1. Honor; honorableness; dignity; propriety; suitableness; decency. [Obs.] Chaucer. She derives her honesty and achieves her goodness. Shak.
2. The quality or state of being honest; probity; fairness and straightforwardness of conduct, speech, etc.; integrity; sincerity; truthfulness; freedom from fraud or guile. That we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. 1 Tim. ii. 2.
3. Chastity; modesty. Chaucer. To lay . . . siege to the honesty of this Ford's wife. Shak.
4. (Bot.)
2 more senses
Satin flower; the name of two cruciferous herbs having large flat pods, the round shining partitions of which are more beautiful than the blossom; -- called also lunary and moonwort. Lunaria biennis is common honesty; L. rediva is perennial honesty.
Syn. -- Integrity; probity; uprightness; trustiness; faithfulness; honor; justice; equity; fairness; candor; plain-dealing; veracity; sincerity.
Shades of meaning
Fernald has no entry of its own for honesty; he lists it under veracity, virtue.
Where he writes about it:
Candor, frankness, honesty, and ingenuousness are allied with veracity, and verity with truth, while truthfulness may accord with either. — from veracity
Honesty and probity are used especially of one's relations to his fellow men, probity being to honesty much what virtue in some respects is to goodness; probity is honesty tried and proved, especially in those things that are beyond the reach of legal requirement; above the commercial sense, honesty may be applied to the highest truthfulness of the soul to and with itself and its Maker. — from virtue
Integrity, in the full sense, is moral wholeness without a flaw; when used, as it often is, of contracts and dealings, it has reference to inherent character and principle, and denotes much more than superficial or conventional honesty. — from virtue
Honor is a lofty honesty that scorns fraud or wrong as base and unworthy of itself. — from virtue
Honor rises far above thought of the motto that "honesty is the best policy." Purity is freedom from all admixture, especially of that which debases; it is chastity both of heart and life, but of the life because from the heart. — from virtue