Comment by giantrobot
3 months ago
I've noticed "honestly" is often used in place of "frankly". As in someone wants to express something frankly without prior restraint to appease the sensibilities of the recipient(s). I think it's because a lot of people never really learned the definition of frankness or think "frankly..." sounds a bit old fashioned. But I'm no language expert.
I agree with this. And it doesn’t help that the President uses it like one would usually use ‘furthermore’ when he’s vamping one more element to a list.
This makes a lot of sense.