adjective, noun, adverb
adjective (plainer, plainest)
1 easy to see or understand:
He made it plain that we should leave. * She made her annoyance plain. * The facts were plain to see.
2 not trying to trick anyone; honest and direct:
The plain fact is that nobody really knows. * a politician with a reputation for plain speaking * (especially AmE) a plain, straightforward sort of man
3 not decorated or complicated; simple:
a plain but elegant dress * plain food / cooking * The interior of the church was plain and simple. * plain yogurt (= without sugar or fruit)
compareFANCY
4 without marks or a pattern on it:
covers in plain or printed cotton * Write on plain paper (= without lines).
5 [onlybeforenoun] used to emphasize that sth is very ordinary, not special in any way:
You don't need any special skills for this job, just plain common sense.
6 (especially of a woman) not beautiful or attractive
plainness noun [U]
IDIOMS
be plain sailing (AmE also clear sailing) to be simple and free from trouble
in plain English simply and clearly expressed, without using technical language:
a document written in plain English * If you could put it in plain English I might be able to understand.
(as) plain as a pikestaff
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for plain is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does plain appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — plain appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
