simpler

1. comparativecomparative form of simple: more simple, less complicated or challenging.

   1 more example

   During the first year or so of British Railways, some of the simpler and more obvious inter-regional transfers of outlying sections were effected, such as those of the London, Tilbury & Southend Railway from the London Midland Region to the Eastern Region; the South Wales lines of the former L.M.S.R. to the Western Region; the Carlisle-Silloth branch (an L.N.E.R. legacy of a North British "border raid") to the London Midland, and so on.

   1951 April, D. S. Barrie, “British Railways: A Survey, 1948-1950”, in Railway Magazine, number 600, page 224

plural simplers

1. archaicOne who grows or gathers simples (medicinal herbs).

   … may with no great impropriety be termed going a simpling; but with this special difference, that your field simpler never picks up a nettle for a marsh-mallow; a mistake which your tour simpler is very liable to.

   1833, William Hogarth, Anecdotes of William Hogarth: written by himself, page 48

   1 more example

   One of the great pleasures in botany is, to produce a rather uncommon plant to those who know it to be curious; but the English botanist will not have much satisfaction in shewing it to a simpler, who is not acquainted with it under the name given by Gerard or Ray.

   1781, Daines Barrington, Miscellanies, Essay VII, On the Linnæan System, page 273

   Synonyms: simplist

plural Simplers

1. A surname from German.