plain

adj

1. (archaic, regional)Flat, level.

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

2. Simple, unaltered.

   “He was dressed simply in plain black clothes.”

   “a plain tune”

   “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.”

3. Simple, unaltered.

   “a plain pink polycotton skirt”

4. Simple, unaltered.

   “They're just plain people like you or me.”

   “plain yet pious Christians”

   “the plain people”

5. Simple, unaltered.

   “Would you like a poppy bagel or a plain bagel?”

6. Simple, unaltered.
7. 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.”

8. Obvious.

   “His answer was just plain nonsense.”

9. Open.

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

   “[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.”

   “an honest mind, and plain, he must speak truth”

   “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.”

10. Open.

    “Our troops beat an army in plain fight.”

11. 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.”

12. Not a trump.
13. (obsolete)Full, complete in number or extent.

adv

1. (colloquial, not-comparable)Simply.

   “It was just plain stupid.”

   “I plain forgot.”

   “One trouble, he explained, is that dope pushers flock to neighborhoods where two gangs are at war, knowing they will find buyers among members of the gangs who are so keyed up that they welcome any kind of relaxation or who are just plain afraid.”

2. (archaic, not-comparable)Plainly; distinctly.

   “Tell me plain: do you love me or no?”

noun

1. 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.”

   “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. 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.”

3. (archaic)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.”

4. (alt-of, alternative, obsolete)Alternative spelling of plane: a flat geometric field.
5. (poetic, rare)A lamentation.

   “The warrior-threat, the infant's plain, The mother's screams, were heard in vain;”

verb

1. (obsolete, transitive)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;”

2. (obsolete, transitive)To make plain or manifest; to explain.

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

3. (obsolete, reflexive)To complain.

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

4. (ambitransitive, archaic, poetic)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.”

   “Then, again, she almost thought that the soft and wailing wind which swept mournfully through the sepulchral boughs of the large old yews, had a voice not of this world—was it the inarticulate plaining of her brother's gentle spirit, debarred from intercourse, but still keeping over her the deep and eternal watch of love?”

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

name

1. A surname.