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Upfront, up front

Reader question:

In the following – Should we have been upfront with them in both cases? What do you think the results of such honesty would have been? – is "upfront" the same as "honesty"?

My comments:

You're close. Being honest means you don't lie or steal or whatever. If you're honest with someone, you don't lie to them about what you've done if they ask you about it. If you're upfront with them, however, you tell them before hand, before they ask you about it.

See the difference?

You can best understand what being upfront means by examining the adverb form of the word – up front.

Yes, upfront means being up front. If you're a shareholder of a company and you want the company to be up front with you, that means you want the company to tell you about its business deals ahead of time. You don't want to find them out later in the newspaper.

Or if you order something by telephone and they tell you they need the money up front, you have to pay first before they have the goods delivered to you.

Hence, therefore, if you're upfront with someone over something, you tell them directly, from the start, without waiting for them to ask you first. Longman dictionary gives this example: "Jorge wanted to help her, but she told him up front that she didn't need it." Here, she was being honest with Jorge, that is, honest in a frank, direct and straightforward way.