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plainly. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
plainly, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
plainly in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
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English
Etymology
From Middle English playnly, pleinly, pleyneliche, equivalent to plain + -ly.
Pronunciation
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.
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