plainly

comparative plainlier · comparative more plainly · superlative plainliest · superlative most plainly

1. In a plain manner; simply; basically.

   She decorated the room plainly but neatly.

   1 more example

   'Tell me plainly what you think of my daughter's little companion.'

   1956 [1880], Johanna Spyri, Heidi, translation of original by Eileen Hall, page 95

2. Obviously; clearly.

   You will see that ours is plainly the better method.

   2 more examples

   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.

   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

   Plainly he was prepared to bark out an interminable succession of charges against the Wanderer.

   1932, Delos W. Lovelace, King Kong, published 1965, page 3

   Synonyms: expressly