plain

• enPR: plān, IPA^(key): /pleɪn/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪn
• Homophone: plane

From Middle English pleyn, borrowed from Anglo-Norman pleyn, playn, borrowed from Middle French plain, plein, from Old French plain, from Latin plānus (“flat, even, level, plain”).

a plain bagel

plain (comparative plainer, superlative plainest)

1. (now rare, regional) Flat, level. [from 14th c.]
   • Bible, Isaiah xl. 4

     The crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.

2. Simple.
   1. Ordinary; lacking adornment or ornamentation; unembellished. [from 14th c.]

      He was dressed simply in plain black clothes.

      a plain tune

      • 2013 September-October, Henry Petroski, “The Evolution of Eyeglasses”, in American Scientist:

        The ability of a segment of a glass sphere to magnify whatever is placed before it was known around the year 1000, when the spherical segment was called a reading stone, essentially what today we might term a frameless magnifying glass or plain glass paperweight.

   2. Of just one colour; lacking a pattern.

      a plain pink polycotton skirt

   3. Simple in habits or qualities; unsophisticated, not exceptional, ordinary. [from 16th c.]

      They're just plain people like you or me.

      • (Can we date this quote?) Henry Hammond

        plain yet pious Christians

      • (Can we date this quote?) Abraham Lincoln

        the plain people

   4. (of food) Having only few ingredients, or no additional ingredients or seasonings; not elaborate, without toppings or extras. [from 17th c.]

      Would you like a poppy bagel or a plain bagel?

   5. (computing) Containing no extended or nonprinting characters (especially in plain text). [from 20th c.]
3. Obvious.
   1. Evident to one's senses or reason; manifest, clear, unmistakable. [from 14th c.]
      • 1843, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, book 2, ch. XV, Practical — Devotional

        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.

   2. Downright; total, unmistakable (as intensifier). [from 14th c.]

      His answer was just plain nonsense.

4. Open.
   1. Honest and without deception; candid, open; blunt. [from 14th c.]

      Let me be plain with you: I don't like her.

      • 1577, Socrates Scholasticus [i.e., Socrates of Constantinople], “Constantinus the Emperour Summoneth the Nicene Councell, it was Held at Nicæa a Citie of Bythnia for the Debatinge of the Controuersie about the Feast of Easter, and the Rootinge out of the Heresie of Arius”, in Eusebius Pamphilus; Socrates Scholasticus; Evagrius Scholasticus; Dorotheus; Meredith Hanmer, transl., The Avncient Ecclesiasticall Histories of the First Six Hundred Yeares after Christ, Wrytten in the Greeke Tongue by Three Learned Historiographers, Eusebius, Socrates, and Euagrius. [...], book I (The First Booke of the Ecclesiasticall Historye of Socrates Scholasticvs), imprinted at London: By Thomas Vautroullier dwelling in the Blackefriers by Ludgate, OCLC 55193813, page 225:

        [VV]e are able with playne demonſtration to proue, and vvith reaſon to perſvvade that in tymes paſt our fayth vvas alike, that then vve preached thinges correſpondent vnto the forme of faith already published of vs, ſo that none in this behalfe can repyne or gaynesay vs.

      • (Can we date this quote?) William Shakespeare

        an honest mind, and plain

      • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. In Six Volumes, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: Printed by A[ndrew] Millar, […], OCLC 928184292:

        The Quaker was no sooner assured by this fellow of the birth and low fortune of Jones, than all compassion for him vanished; and the honest plain man went home fired with no less indignation than a duke would have felt at receiving an affront from such a person.

   2. Clear; unencumbered; equal; fair.
      • (Can we date this quote?) Felton

        Our troops beat an army in plain fight.

5. Not unusually beautiful; unattractive. [from 17th c.]
   • 1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy:

     Yet her beauty clung to her like an identity she was trying to deny and her plainness kept slipping like a bad disguise.

   Throughout high school she worried that she had a rather plain face.

6. (card games) Not a trump.

• no-frills
• normal
• ordinary
• simple
• unadorned
• unseasoned
• See also Thesaurus:bare-bones

• bells and whistles
• decorative
• exotic
• fancy
• ornate

• plane
• planar

plain (not comparable)

1. (colloquial) Simply.

   It was just plain stupid.

   I plain forgot.

2. (archaic) Plainly; distinctly.

   Tell me plain: do you love me or no?

From Anglo-Norman plainer, pleiner, variant of Anglo-Norman and Old French pleindre, plaindre, from Latin plangere, present active infinitive of plangō.

• plein

plain (plural plains)

1. (rare, poetic) A lamentation.
   • 1815, Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Isles, Canto IV, part IX

     The warrior-threat, the infant's plain,

     The mother's screams, were heard in vain;

plain (third-person singular simple present plains, present participle plaining, simple past and past participle plained)

1. (reflexive, obsolete) To complain. [13th-19th c.]
   • c. 1390, William Landland, Piers Plowman, Prologue:

     Persones and parisch prestes · pleyned hem to þe bischop / Þat here parisshes were pore · sith þe pestilence tyme […].

2. (transitive, intransitive, now rare, poetic) To lament, bewail. [from 14th c.]

   to plain a loss

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Sir J. Harrington to this entry?)

   • (Can we date this quote?) Bishop Joseph Hall

     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.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Alfred Edward Housman, More Poems, XXV, lines 5-9

     Then came I crying, and to-day, / With heavier cause to plain, / Depart I into death away, / Not to be born again.

• complain
• plaint
• plaintive

From Old French plain, from Latin plānum (“level ground, a plain”), neuter substantive from plānus (“level, even, flat”).

a plain

plain (plural plains)

1. An expanse of land with relatively low relief, usually exclusive of forests, deserts, and wastelands.
   • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton

     Him the Ammonite / Worshipped in Rabba and her watery plain.

   • 1961, J. A. Philip. Mimesis in the Sophistês of Plato. In: Proceedings and Transactions of the American Philological Association 92. p. 467.

     For Plato the life of the philosopher is a life of struggle towards the goal of knowledge, towards “searching the heavens and measuring the plains, in all places seeking the nature of everything as a whole”

2. (archaic) Synonym of field in reference to a battlefield.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Arbuthnot to this entry?)

   • (Can we date this quote?) Shakespeare

     Lead forth my soldiers to the plain.

3. (obsolete) Alternative spelling of plane: a flat geometric field.

• As with grassland(s), flatland(s), &c., plains can function as the plural of plain (There are ten principal low plains on Mars) or as its synonym (She lives in the plains), with a vague sense of greater expansiveness.

• (flat land): land, terrain

• (flat land): plains, flatland, flatlands, grassland, grasslands

• prairie, steppe

• esplanade
• explain

plain (third-person singular simple present plains, present participle plaining, simple past and past participle plained)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To level; to raze; to make plain or even on the surface.
   • 1594, Christopher Marlowe, Edward II, London: William Jones,

     Frownst thou thereat aspiring Lancaster,

     The sworde shall plane the furrowes of thy browes,

   • 1612, George Wither, Prince Henrie’s Obsequies, Elegy 24, in Egerton Brydges (editor), Restituta, Volume I, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1814, p. 399,

     Though kept by Rome’s and Mahomet’s chiefe powers;

     They should not long detain him there in thrall:

     We would rake Europe rather, plain the East;

     Dispeople the whole Earth before the doome:

2. (obsolete, transitive) To make plain or manifest; to explain.
   • c. 1608, William Shakespeare, Pericles, Act III, Prologue,

     What’s dumb in show, I’ll plain with speech.

• Aplin, Lipan, Palin, Pinal, in lap, lapin, plani-

From Latin plēnus. Compare Italian pieno, Romansch plain, Romanian plin, French plein.

plain (feminine plaina)

1. full

From Old French plain, from Latin plānus. Doublet of plan and piano.

• IPA^(key): /plɛ̃/

• Audio

  (file)

• Homophones: plains, plein, pleins

plain (feminine singular plaine, masculine plural plains, feminine plural plaines)

1. (obsolete) plane

• “plain” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

• alpin, lapin

From Old French plain, from Latin plēnus.

plain m (feminine singular plaine, masculine plural plains, feminine plural plaines)

1. full (not empty)

From Latin plēnus.

plain m (feminine plaine)

1. full (not empty)
   • circa 1170, Chrétien de Troyes, Érec et Énide:

     De tant come ele l'ot veü,

     Que plains estoit de felenie.

     As she had seen

     He was full of evil

• (full): vuit

• French: plein

From Latin plānum (“level ground, a plain”), neuter substantive from plānus (“level, even, flat”).

plain m (oblique plural plainz, nominative singular plainz, nominative plural plain)

1. plain (flat area)

• plaine

• → Dutch: plein
• → Middle English:
  • English: plain
  • Scots: plain

From Latin plānus (“level, even, flat”).

plain m (oblique and nominative feminine singular plaine)

1. flat (not even or mountainous)

• (Sursilvan) plein
• (Sutsilvan, Surmiran) plagn

From Latin plēnus.

plain m (feminine singular plaina, masculine plural plains, feminine plural plainas)

1. (Rumantsch Grischun, Puter, Vallader) full