frankness
Americannoun
Other Word Forms
- prefrankness noun
Etymology
Origin of frankness
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“Wake me up in a hundred years, ask me what is happening in Russia,” mused Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, a 19th-century satirist, “and I’ll tell you with my usual frankness: We steal, we drink, we make war.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 22, 2026
Legally, I assume there’s no way around the latter and, as queasy as it is to stomach, the frankness of it fits the tone.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 5, 2025
Portraits come in many incarnations—the rigorous realism of Holbein, the rococo elegance of Gainsborough, the harsh frankness of Lucian Freud, to name just a few.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 28, 2025
Judge John Woosley ruled that in “ ‘Ulysses,’ in spite of its unusual frankness, I do not detect anywhere the leer of the sensualist.”
From Slate • Aug. 21, 2025
The ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint: the friendly frankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treated me, drew me to him.
From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
