Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈpleɪnli/
- Rhymes: -eɪnli
Adverb
plainly (comparative plainlier or more plainly, superlative plainliest or most plainly)
- In a plain manner; simply; basically.
She decorated the room plainly but neatly.
1956 [1880], Johanna Spyri, Heidi, translation of original by Eileen Hall, page 95:'Tell me plainly what you think of my daughter's little companion.'
- Obviously; clearly.
You will see that ours is plainly the better method.
1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:The stories did not seem to me to touch life. They were plainly intended to have a bracing moral effect, and perhaps had this result for the people at whom they were aimed. They left me with the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture, with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator.
1932, Delos W. Lovelace, King Kong, published 1965, page 3:Plainly he was prepared to bark out an interminable succession of charges against the Wanderer.