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say it: playn
plain is an adjective, noun, verb and adverb meaning "clearly revealed to the mind or the senses or judgment". It is pronounced /ˈpleɪn/ — playn. It carries 11 recorded senses.
clearly revealed to the mind or the senses or judgment
“the effects of the drought are apparent to anyone who sees the parched fields”
“evident hostility”
“manifest disapproval”
“patent advantages”
“made his meaning plain”
“it is plain that he is no reactionary”
“in plain view”
“a palpable lie”
not elaborate or elaborated; simple
“plain food”
“stuck to the plain facts”
“a plain blue suit”
“a plain rectangular brick building”
lacking patterns especially in color
free from any effort to soften to disguise
“the plain and unvarnished truth”
“the unvarnished candor of old people and children”
lacking embellishment or ornamentation
“a plain hair style”
“unembellished white walls”
“functional architecture featuring stark unornamented concrete”
lacking in physical beauty or proportion
“a homely child”
“several of the buildings were downright homely”
“a plain girl with a freckled face”
a basic knitting stitch made by putting the needle through the front of the stitch from the lefthand side
unmistakably (`plain' is often used informally for `plainly')
“the answer is obviously wrong”
“she was in bed and evidently in great pain”
“he was manifestly too important to leave off the guest list”
“it is all patently nonsense”
“she has apparently been living here for some time”
“I thought he owned the property, but apparently not”
“You are plainly wrong”
“he is plain stubborn”
colloquialism
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for plain come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.