If we're being truthful, people are saying 'honestly' all the time
toggle caption Yoshiyoshi Hirokawa/Getty images
To be honest, people are saying "honestly" all the time.
According to the Corpus of Historical American English, a database that measures word usage over time, the use of "honestly" has skyrocketed over the last 25 years.
toggle caption Mark Liberman/Mark Davies, Corpus of Historical American English
Not just in casual conversation: It's a signifier of online authenticity.
"Honestly" is the name of the podcast by CBS News' new editor Bari Weiss, the title of a 2022 studio album by Drake, the name of a new AI journaling app and appended to a number of popular TikTok and Instagram accounts.
So, for this installment of Word of the Week, we ask, what
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