plainly

From Middle English playnly, pleinly, pleyneliche, equivalent to plain +‎ -ly.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpleɪnli/

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• Rhymes: -eɪnli

plainly (comparative plainlier or more plainly, superlative plainliest or most plainly)

1. 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.'

2. Obviously; clearly.
   • 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.

   You will see that ours is plainly the better method.

• (obviously, clearly): expressly, unambiguously; see also Thesaurus:explicitly or Thesaurus:obviously