A lot of misunderstandings are just two people using the same word for different things.

Plenty of words carry a private definition for each person and nobody announces theirs: soon, fine, fair, a lot. Two people can agree completely on a sentence while meaning incompatible things by it, then find the gap weeks later and read it as bad faith. Almost none of that is dishonesty, it is unexamined vocabulary. The disagreement sits downstream of a definition nobody checked.

When something feels tangled, ask what they mean by the key word instead of arguing about the conclusion. Offer your own version of it as well. Agreeing on terms often ends the whole argument on the spot.