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The quality or state of being plain.

Plainness to the eye or the mind; visibleness; obviousness. [R.] Sherwood.

Plainness; freedom from adornment; severe simplicity. Partly owing to the studied austerity of her dress, and partly to the lack of demonstration in her manners. Hawthorne.

A bruptness of address; rude plainness. "Bluntness of speech." Boyle.

The manners of a clown; coarseness or rudeness of behavior. That plainness which the alamode people call clownishness. Locke.

t surface upon which the figures of a composition are set, and which relieves them by its plainness, being either of one tint or of tints but slightly contrasted with one another; as, crimson Bowers on a white ground. See Background, Foreground, and Middle-ground.

Plainness; want of elegance or beauty.

Simplicity or plainness, bordering on weakness or silliness; artlessness; ingenuousness. Chaucer. Shak.

Native simplicity; unaffected plainness or ingenuousness; artlessness. A story which pleases me by its naïveté -- that is, by its unconscious ingenuousness. De Quincey.

art with pity. Shak. The translator of Homer should penetrate himself with a sense of the plainness and directness of Homer's style. M. Arnold.

arely extending beyond the compass of an octave. (b) A simple melody. -- Plain speaking, plainness or bluntness of speech.

A belted waist resembling a shirt in plainness of cut and style, worn by women or children; -- in England called a blouse.

Freedom from artificial ornament, pretentious style, or luxury; plainness; as, simplicity of dress, of style, or of language; simplicity of diet; simplicity of life.

t repeateth a matter separateth very friends. Prov. xvii. 9. The very essence of truth is plainness and brightness. Milton. I looked on the consideration of public service or public ornament to be real and very justice. Burke.