different between plain vs pure

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: pl?n, IPA^(key): /ple?n/, [p?l?e?n]
• Rhymes: -e?n
• Homophone: plane

Etymology 1

From Middle English pleyn, borrowed from Anglo-Norman pleyn, playn, Middle French plain, plein, and Old French plain, from Latin pl?nus (“flat, even, level, plain”).

Alternative forms

• plaine (obsolete)

Adjective

plain (comparative plainer, superlative plainest)

1. (now rare, regional) Flat, level. [from 14th c.]

   • The crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.

2. Simple.
   1. Ordinary; lacking adornment or ornamentation; unembellished. [from 14th c.]
   2. Of just one colour; lacking a pattern.

   3. Simple in habits or qualities; unsophisticated, not exceptional, ordinary. [from 16th c.]
      • 1654, Henry Hammond, Of Fundamentals

        plain yet pious Christians

      • 1861, Abraham Lincoln, Message to Congress in Special Session, July 4th

        the plain people

   4. (of food) Having only few ingredients, or no additional ingredients or seasonings; not elaborate, without toppings or extras. [from 17th c.]

   5. (computing) Containing no extended or nonprinting characters (especially in plain text). [from 20th c.]
3. Obvious.
   1. Evident to one's senses or reason; manifest, clear, unmistakable. [from 14th c.]
      • 1843, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, book 2, ch. XV, Practical — Devotional

        In fact, by excommunication or persuasion, by impetuosity of driving or adroitness in leading, this Abbot, it is now becoming plain everywhere, is a man that generally remains master at last.

   2. Downright; total, unmistakable (as intensifier). [from 14th c.]

4. Open.
   1. Honest and without deception; candid, open; blunt. [from 14th c.]
      • The Quaker was no sooner assured by this fellow of the birth and low fortune of Jones, than all compassion for him vanished; and the honest plain man went home fired with no less indignation than a duke would have felt at receiving an affront from such a person.

   2. Clear; unencumbered; equal; fair.
      • 1711, Henry Felton, Dissertation on Reading the Classics

        Our troops beat an army in plain fight.

5. Not unusually beautiful; unattractive. [from 17th c.]

6. (card games) Not a trump.

Synonyms

• (lacking adornment or ornamentation): no-frills, simple, unadorned, unseasoned; see also Thesaurus:bare-bones
• (of just one colour): monochrome
• (not exceptional): normal, ordinary
• (obvious): blatant, ostensible; see also Thesaurus:obvious or Thesaurus:explicit
• (intensifier): consarn, darned, stinking; see also Thesaurus:damned
• (honest and without deception): frank, sincere; see also Thesaurus:honest

Antonyms

• bells and whistles
• decorative
• exotic
• fancy
• ornate

Derived terms

Related terms

• plane
• planar

Translations

Adverb

plain (not comparable)

1. (colloquial) Simply.

   It was just plain stupid.

   I plain forgot.

2. (archaic) Plainly; distinctly.

   Tell me plain: do you love me or no?

Etymology 2

From Anglo-Norman plainer, pleiner, variant of Anglo-Norman and Old French pleindre, plaindre, from Latin plangere, present active infinitive of plang?.

Alternative forms

• plein

Noun

plain (plural plains)

1. (rare, poetic) A lamentation.
   • 1815, Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Isles, Canto IV, part IX

     The warrior-threat, the infant's plain,
     The mother's screams, were heard in vain;

Verb

plain (third-person singular simple present plains, present participle plaining, simple past and past participle plained)

1. (reflexive, obsolete) To complain. [13th–19th c.]
   • c. 1390, William Landland, Piers Plowman, Prologue:

     Persones and parisch prestes · pleyned hem to þe bischop / Þat here parisshes were pore · sith þe pestilence tyme […].

2. (transitive, intransitive, now rare, poetic) To lament, bewail. [from 14th c.]

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Sir J. Harrington to this entry?)

   • c. 1600, Joseph Hall, Satires

     Thy mother could thee for thy cradle set
     Her husband's rusty iron corselet;
     Whose jargling sound might rock her babe to rest,
     That never plain'd of his uneasy nest.

   • 1936, Alfred Edward Housman, More Poems, "XXV", lines 5–9

     Then came I crying, and to-day, / With heavier cause to plain, / Depart I into death away, / Not to be born again.

Related terms

Etymology 3

From Old French plain, from Latin pl?num (“level ground, a plain”), neuter substantive from pl?nus (“level, even, flat”). Doublet of llano, piano, and plane.

Noun

plain (plural plains)

1. An expanse of land with relatively low relief, usually exclusive of forests, deserts, and wastelands.
   • 1961, J. A. Philip. Mimesis in the Sophistês of Plato. In: Proceedings and Transactions of the American Philological Association 92. p. 467.

     For Plato the life of the philosopher is a life of struggle towards the goal of knowledge, towards “searching the heavens and measuring the plains, in all places seeking the nature of everything as a whole”

   Synonyms: flatland, grassland

   Hypernyms: land, terrain

   Hyponyms: prairie, steppe

2. (archaic) Synonym of field in reference to a battlefield.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Arbuthnot to this entry?)
3. (obsolete) Alternative spelling of plane: a flat geometric field.

Usage notes

• As with grassland(s), flatland(s), &c., plains can function as the plural of plain (There are ten principal low plains on Mars) or as its synonym (She lives in the plains), with a vague sense of greater expansiveness.

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Verb

plain (third-person singular simple present plains, present participle plaining, simple past and past participle plained)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To level; to raze; to make plain or even on the surface.
   • 1594, Christopher Marlowe, Edward II, London: William Jones,^[1]

     Frownst thou thereat aspiring Lancaster,
     The sworde shall plane the furrowes of thy browes,

   • 1612, George Wither, Prince Henrie’s Obsequies, Elegy 24, in Egerton Brydges (editor), Restituta, Volume I, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1814, p. 399,^[2]

     Though kept by Rome’s and Mahomet’s chiefe powers;
     They should not long detain him there in thrall:
     We would rake Europe rather, plain the East;
     Dispeople the whole Earth before the doome:

2. (obsolete, transitive) To make plain or manifest; to explain.
   • c. 1608, William Shakespeare, Pericles, Act III, Prologue,^[3]

     What’s dumb in show, I’ll plain with speech.

Anagrams

• Aplin, Lipan, Palin, Pinal, in lap, lapin, plani-

Dalmatian

Etymology

From Latin pl?nus. Compare Italian pieno, Romansch plain, Romanian plin, French plein.

Adjective

plain (feminine plaina)

1. full

French

Etymology

From Old French plain, from Latin pl?nus. Doublet of plan and piano.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pl??/
• Homophones: plains, plein, pleins

Adjective

plain (feminine singular plaine, masculine plural plains, feminine plural plaines)

1. (obsolete) plane

Derived terms

• plain-pied
• plain-chant

Further reading

• “plain” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Anagrams

• alpin, lapin

Middle French

Etymology

From Old French plain, from Latin pl?nus.

Adjective

plain m (feminine singular plaine, masculine plural plains, feminine plural plaines)

1. full (not empty)

Old French

Etymology 1

From Latin pl?nus.

Adjective

plain m (feminine plaine)

1. full (not empty)
   • circa 1170, Chrétien de Troyes, Érec et Énide:

     De tant come ele l'ot veü,

     Que plains estoit de felenie.

     As she had seen

     He was full of evil

   Antonym: vuit

Descendants

• French: plein

Etymology 2

From Latin pl?num (“level ground, a plain”), neuter substantive from pl?nus (“level, even, flat”).

Noun

plain m (oblique plural plainz, nominative singular plainz, nominative plural plain)

1. plain (flat area)

Synonyms

• plaine

Descendants

• ? Dutch: plein
• ? Middle English:
  • English: plain
  • Scots: plain

Etymology 3

From Latin pl?nus (“level, even, flat”).

Adjective

plain m (oblique and nominative feminine singular plaine)

1. flat (not even or mountainous)

Romansch

Alternative forms

• plein (Sursilvan)
• plagn (Sutsilvan, Surmiran)

Etymology

From Latin pl?nus.

Adjective

plain m (feminine singular plaina, masculine plural plains, feminine plural plainas)

1. (Rumantsch Grischun, Puter, Vallader) full

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English pure, pur, from Old French pur, from Latin p?rus (“clean, free from dirt or filth, unmixed, plain”), from Proto-Indo-European *pewH- (“to cleanse, purify”). Displaced native Middle English lutter (“pure, clear, sincere”) (from Old English hl?tor, hluttor), Middle English skere (“pure, sheer, clear”) (from Old English sc?re and Old Norse sk?r), Middle English schir (“clear, pure”) (from Old English sc?r), Middle English smete, smeate (“pure, refined”) (from Old English sm?te; compare Old English m?re (“pure”)).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?pj??/, /?pj??/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?pj??/, /?pj??/
• (cure-fir merger, rhotic) IPA^(key): /?pj?/
• (cure-fir merger, non-rhotic) IPA^(key): /?pj??/
• (US)
• Rhymes: -??(r), -??(?)

Adjective

pure (comparative purer or more pure, superlative purest or most pure)

1. Free of flaws or imperfections; unsullied.
3. Free of foreign material or pollutants.
   • 1725, Isaac Watts, Logick, or The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry After Truth With a Variety of Rules to Guard

     A guinea is pure gold if it has in it no alloy.

4. Free of immoral behavior or qualities; clean.
   • c. 1530, William Tyndale (translator), Bible, 1 Timothy, 5:22,

     Laye hondes sodely^[suddenly] on no man nether be partaker of other mes^[men's] synnes: kepe thy silfe pure.

5. Mere; that and that only.

   That idea is pure madness!

6. (of a branch of science) Done for its own sake instead of serving another branch of science.
7. (phonetics) Of a single, simple sound or tone; said of some vowels and the unaspirated consonants.
8. (of sound) Without harmonics or overtones; not harsh or discordant.

Synonyms

• (free of flaws): see Thesaurus:pure
• (free of foreign material): see Thesaurus:raw
• (free of immoral behavior): innocent

Antonyms

• (free of flaws): dirty, flawed, impure
• (free of foreign material): contaminated, impure
• (free of immoral behavior): corrupt, guilty, sinful
• (done for its own sake): applied

Derived terms

• pure finder
• as pure as the driven snow

Related terms

• purification
• purify
• purity
• puritan
• puritanism
• purist
• purism

Translations

Adverb

pure (not comparable)

1. (Liverpudlian, Scotland) to a great extent or degree; extremely; exceedingly.

   You’re pure busy.

   • 1996, Trainspotting (film)

     I just get pure shy with the interview cats.

Translations

Verb

pure (third-person singular simple present pures, present participle puring, simple past and past participle pured)

1. (golf) to hit (the ball) completely cleanly and accurately

   Tiger Woods pured his first drive straight down the middle of the fairway.

2. (transitive, obsolete) To cleanse; to refine.

Noun

pure (countable and uncountable, plural pures)

1. One who, or that which, is pure.
   • 1845, The Lancet, page 187:

     ... the establishment of an inferior College, and the consequent connexion of the many thousands of British practitioners in medicine and surgery with a subordinate institution, and one that should be subservient to the government of the pures.

   • c. 1870, D. K. Gavan, Rocky Road to Dublin:

     Took a drop of the pure, to keep my spirits from sinking, […]

   • 1998, Christopher Leigh Connery, The Empire of the Text: Writing and Authority in Early Imperial China, Rowman & Littlefield (?ISBN), page 30:

     All interpretive frames will impose their categories on the object of historical analysis, and I am not proposing that this narrative of the "pures"; be rejected in favor of some phantasmatic framework that claims to derive more purely from the sources themselves. I will show in chapter 3 that, since the "pures" possibly did not even exist […]

Etymology 2

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /pj??/
• Rhymes: -??(r)
• (US) IPA^(key): /pj??/

Noun

pure (uncountable)

1. Alternative form of puer (“dung (e.g. of dogs)”)
   • 1851, H. Mayhew, London Labour and the London poor, vII. 142/1:

     […] Dogs'-dung is called ‘Pure’, from its cleansing and purifying properties.

   • 2001, Wendy Lawton, The Tinker's Daughter, ch. 8:

     Mary smelled the rancid odor of the tannery on the right side of the road. […]

     "What is that, Mary?" Jake asked.

     "'Tis a bag for collecting pure. That is going to be your job, Jake. You are to collect pure."

     "Pure? What is pure?"

     "Pure is another word for dung," Mary answered.

   • 2013, Terry Pratchett, Raising Steam, p. 28:

     […] surely there was something better for him than chasing the pure (footnote: A term, technically speaking, for dog muck, much prized by the tanneries.) […]

Further reading

• pure in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• pure in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Anagrams

• Peru, Pre-U, Prue, Pu'er, Rupe, pu'er, puer, re-up, reup

Danish

Etymology 1

From Latin p?re, the adverb of p?rus (“clean, pure”); or the definite form of pur (“pure”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pu?r?/, [?p?u???]

Adjective

pure

1. complete
2. (adverbial) completely

Inflection

Etymology 2

From French purée (“puree”).

Alternative forms

• puré

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pyre/, [p?y??æ]

Noun

pure c (singular definite pureen, plural indefinite pureer)

1. puree

Inflection

Etymology 3

See the etymology of the main entry.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pu?r?/, [?p?u???]

Adjective

pure

1. definite of pur
2. plural of pur

Esperanto

Adverb

pure

1. purely

Finnish

Verb

pure

1. inflection of purra:
   1. indicative present connegative
   2. second-person singular imperative present/present connegative

Anagrams

• Peru, peru

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /py?/
• Homophones: pur, purs, pures
• Rhymes: -y?

Adjective

pure

1. feminine singular of pur

Anagrams

• peur
• puer
• repu
• rupe, rupé

German

Pronunciation

Adjective

pure

1. inflection of pur:
   1. strong/mixed nominative/accusative feminine singular
   2. strong nominative/accusative plural
   3. weak nominative all-gender singular
   4. weak accusative feminine/neuter singular

Italian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?pu.re/
• Rhymes: -ure

Etymology 1

Adjective

pure

1. feminine plural of puro

Etymology 2

From Latin p?r?, the adverb of p?rus.

Adverb

pure

1. too, also, as well

   Synonym: anche

2. well, surely
3. please, by all means
4. if you like; if you want (etc.)

Conjunction

pure

1. even though, even if, although
2. nevertheless

References

Anagrams

• Perù
• prue
• rupe

Latin

Etymology 1

From p?rus (“clean; pure”) and -e (“-ly, -ily”).

Adverb

p?r? (comparative p?rius, superlative p?rissim?)

1. clearly, brightly, cleanly
2. correctly, faultlessly, perfectly, purely

   Loqui pure.

   To speak correctly.

Synonyms

• (correctly): ?mend?t?

Etymology 2

Noun

p?re

1. ablative singular of p?s

References

• pure in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• pure in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• Carl Meissner; Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book?^[1], London: Macmillan and Co.

Anagrams

• puer, r?pe

Middle English

Alternative forms

• pur, puyr, pore, poure, peure, pu?r, puir, puire, puyre

Etymology

From Old French pur, from Latin p?rus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /piu?r/

Adjective

pure (comparative purer, superlative purest)

1. pure, unadulterated, undiluted, untarnished
2. entire, total, all
3. perfect, wonderful, unflawed
4. morally clean, pure, or upstanding
5. chaste
6. true, real, genuine, not counterfeit
7. clear, obvious, simple

Descendants

• Scots: puir, pure
• English: pure
• ? Cornish: pur

References

• “p?r(e, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-04-02.

Norwegian Bokmål

Noun

pure m (definite singular pureen, indefinite plural pureer, definite plural pureene)

1. alternative spelling of puré

Norwegian Nynorsk

Etymology 1

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /p??re?/ (example of pronunciation)

Noun

pure m (definite singular pureen, indefinite plural purear, definite plural pureane)

1. alternative spelling of puré

Etymology 2

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /²p??.r?/ (example of pronunciation)

Adjective

pure

1. definite singular of pur
2. plural of pur

Rapa Nui

Etymology

From Proto-Polynesian *pule.

Noun

pure

1. cowrie

Swedish

Adjective

pure

1. absolute definite natural masculine form of pur.

Anagrams

• Peru