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I doubt it's meant to make the preferred pronunciation clearer, because, I'm struggling to imagine an American pronouncing the H in honesty (so no reason to differentiate), the 'aun' would be more confusing if anything because some people pronounce 'aunt' like 'ant', and there'd be no reason to switch y to ie for pronunciation's sake.

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My guess is it's a creative spelling or an unintentional misspelling that caught on and became its own thing.