plain
adjEtymology
From Middle English pleyn, borrowed from Old French plein, from Latin plēnus (“full, filled, complete”). Ultimately from Proto-Italic *plēnos, from Proto-Indo-European *pl̥h₁nós (“full”). Doublet of plene, plenary, and full.
Definitions
Flat, level.
- The crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.
Simple, unaltered.
- He was dressed simply in plain black clothes.
- a plain tune
Obvious.
- In fact, by excommunication or persuasion, by impetuosity of driving or adroitness in leading, this Abbot, it is now becoming plain everywhere, is a man that generally remains master at last.
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Open.
- Let me be plain with you: I don't like her.
- an honest mind, and plain, he must speak truth
Not unusually beautiful
Not unusually beautiful; unattractive.
- Throughout high school she worried that she had a rather plain face.
- Up to that time the girl had never really done her hair, and she regarded boots merely as things to protect the feet. Suddenly it dawned on her that she was considered plain and that she diffused an atmosphere of intellectual frost.
Not a trump.
Simply.
- It was just plain stupid.
- I plain forgot.
Plainly
Plainly; distinctly.
- Tell me plain: do you love me or no?
An expanse of land with relatively low relief and few trees, especially a grassy expanse.
- Him the Ammonite / Worshipped in Rabba and her watery plain.
A broad, flat expanse in general, as of water.
- Fair ship, that from the Italian shore, Sailest the placid ocean-plains With my lost Arthur’s loved remains, Spread thy full wings, and waft him o’er.
Synonym of field in reference to a battlefield.
- You have stormed no town and found the money there ; neither did you find it in the plains of Plassey after the defeat of the Nawab
- Lead forth my soldiers to the plain.
Alternative spelling of plane
Alternative spelling of plane: a flat geometric field.
To level
To level; to raze; to make plain or even on the surface.
- Frownst thou thereat aspiring Lancaster, The sworde shall plane the furrowes of thy browes,
- We would rake Europe rather, plain the East;
To make plain or manifest
To make plain or manifest; to explain.
- What’s dumb in show, I’ll plain with speech.
A lamentation.
- The warrior-threat, the infant's plain, The mother's screams, were heard in vain;
To complain.
- Persones and parisch prestes · pleyned hem to þe bischop / Þat here parisshes were pore · sith þe pestilence tyme […].
To lament, bewail.
- to plain a loss
- Shepheards, that wont[…] Oft times to plaine your loves concealed smart
- Thy mother could thee for thy cradle set Her husband's rusty iron corselet; Whose jargling sound might rock her babe to rest, That never plain'd of his uneasy nest.
Full, complete in number or extent.
A surname.
The neighborhood
Derived
in plain sight, in plain view, just plain folks, overplain, palaeoplain, paleoplain, plain and simple, plain as a haystack, plain as a pikestaff, plain as day, plain as Dunstable highway, plain as porridge, plain as print, plain as Salisbury, plain as the nose on one's face, plain ball, plain bearing, plain bread, plain-breasted hawk, plain brown wrapper, plainchant, plain chocolate, plain-clothed, plainclothed, plain clothes, plain-clothes, plain cook, plain dealer, plain-dealing, plain dealing, plain dress, plain Dunstable, plain English, plain film, plainfin, plain flour, plainhead, plain-hearted, plainish, plain Jane · +176 more
Vish — recursive loop
A definitional loop anchored at plain. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.
A definitional loop anchored at plain. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.
7 hops · closes at plain
curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA