[howaboutnope]

Oh, you're right. But still:

"you are being deceitful" 1 result "you are being dishonest" 42 results

... if I tried them all they might add up to over 100, but still. It's hard to make the case with a few searches, maybe I shouldn't have started this ^^ It's just something I notice constantly. E.g. half of the time, "I'm not entirely sure I agree" is a sincere statement, the other half it's just "I disagree" in more words that are supposed to give an impression of depth that isn't there.

[jobigoud]

But "dishonest" is simpler language register than "deceitful". Doesn't that weakens your argument?

[howaboutnope]

I didn't mean to contrast the two with each other, but both with "disingenuous", of which they're synonyms.

[tux3]

My takeaway from your data is that people call each other various shades of dishonest a lot more than they call each other stupid.

And those are two very different things that don't got much to do with how big the words you type are.

It's easy to not be entirely honest in an argument due to various biases, or when you have some sort of emotional attachment to an argument. That can be a reasonable thing to point out.

Calling people stupid, on the other hand, that is pointless and purely inflammatory.