dishonest
- 1Not honest, or of poor and shoddy quality.
The auditor flagged several dishonest entries in the company's accounts.
Voters punished the politician for his dishonest promises.
Similarfraudulent, deceitful, deceptive, untruthful, false
Oppositehonest, truthful, sincere, trustworthy
Note
Today's everyday sense, though the word arrived meaning something else: Middle English dishoneste, "dishonorable," came through Old French from Latin dehonestus, and it displaced the native Old English unsōþfæst. That older meaning survives in the obsolete "shameful" sense. In current use it fits things as well as people, such as a dishonest entry or a dishonest promise, and it can describe shoddy work, not only a lie.
- 2
- 3Dishonorable, shameful, or indecent; unchaste or lewd.
speake dishonest word
c. 1560, Thomas North, Archontorologioninglorious triumphs and dishonest scars
1713, [Alexander] Pope, Windsor-Forest.Note
The meaning the word arrived with: Middle English dishoneste meant "dishonorable," from Latin dehonestus. Here the fault is shame, not lying. Thomas North's "speake dishonest word" (c. 1560) is an indecent word, and Pope's "dishonest scars" in Windsor-Forest (1713) are disgraceful ones. Read older texts this way; a modern reader will hear only the everyday "not honest" meaning, so do not use this sense in new writing.
Less common meaning
- 4Dishonored, disgraced, or disfigured.
Dishonest with lopped arms the youth appears, / Spoiled of his nose and shortened of his ears.
1697, Virgil, “The Sixth Book of the Æneis”Note
Here the shame is suffered rather than committed: the person or thing has been dishonored, even physically marred. Dryden's Works of Virgil (1697) shows it plainly in "Dishonest with lopped arms the youth appears, / Spoiled of his nose," where the word means mutilated. Unlike the "shameful" sense, it describes a victim. Like that sense, it now needs explaining for modern readers.
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Origin
From Middle English dishoneste ("dishonorable"), from Old French deshoneste, from Latin dehonestus. It is equivalent to dis- plus honest, and it displaced the native Old English word unsōþfæst.