plain adj
1: clearly apparent or obvious to the mind or senses; "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" [syn: apparent, evident, manifest, patent]
2: not elaborate or elaborated; simple; "plain food"; "stuck to the plain facts"; "a plain blue suit"; "a plain rectangular brick building" [ant: fancy]
3: lacking patterns especially in color [syn: unpatterned] [ant: patterned]
4: not mixed with extraneous elements; "plain water"; "sheer wine"; "not an unmixed blessing" [syn: sheer, unmingled, unmixed]
5: free from any effort to soften to disguise; "the plain and unvarnished truth"; "the unvarnished candor of old people and children" [syn: unvarnished]
6: lacking embellishment or ornamentation; "a plain hair style"; "unembellished white walls"; "functional architecture featuring stark unornamented concrete" [syn: unembellished, unornamented]
7: lacking stylistic embellishment; "a literal description"; "wrote good but plain prose"; "a plain unadorned account of the coronation"; "a forthright unembellished style" [syn: literal, unembellished]
8: comprehensible to the general public; "written for the popular press in plain nontechnical language" [syn: popular]
9: lacking in physical beauty or proportion; "a homely child"; "several of the buildings were downright homely"; "a plain girl with a freckled face" [syn: homely] (noun)
1: extensive tract of level open land; "they emerged from the woods onto a vast open plain"; "he longed for the fields of his youth" [syn: field, champaign]
2: a basic knitting stitch [syn: knit, knit stitch, [[plain stitch]]] adv : 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" [syn: obviously, evidently, manifestly, patently, apparently, plainly] v : express complaints, discontent, displeasure, or unhappiness; "My mother complains all day"; "She has a lot to kick about" [syn: complain, kick, sound off, quetch, kvetch] [ant: cheer]