I.
Two plain-clothes men grabbed me as I stepped off the train.
Then I heard the voice of Ezra Pound, speaking in the folksy drawl of a plainsman from the Western United States.
Ribbentrop advised the Japanese to be firm and "use plain language" in their current negotiations in Washington.
Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.
Plain and not honest is too harsh a style,
And the most laudable languages are alwaies most plaine and distinct.
(Cryptographers call the original the "plaintext" but we will simply call it the "message.")
II.
"Rose-cheekt Laura" is therefore merely an unrhymed English trochaic poem, perfectly plain to the ear,
A plainer and more emphatic language,
And often with more plaintive voice.
Wee are fallen into such a playne and simple manner of writing, that there is none other foote used but one.
He begins to stagger in his own plainest faith.
The Galician Maskilim who wrote Yiddish did so for purposes of propaganda and enlightenment only and therefore thought it necessary to write all the more "plainly,"
Something in minor, plaintive and negroid.
III.
On 19 March 1836 Colonel James Fannin and 500 Texian troops were caught on the open plain by about 1500 Mexican cavalry under General José Urrea.
Grant stood on cliffs whence all was plain / And smoked as one who feels no cares.
He ruled the plains of heaven which were established in their width and breadth by God's command for the children of glory.
In plain terms Gideon was asking the Supreme Court to hear his case.
It took me altogether a year and a half before I had him talking real plain where you could understand him.
Abulafia insisted on the need for the systematic disturbance and rearrangement of the plain senses of the text through numerological and other permutations in order to break through to the esoteric, visionary plane of understanding.
Nothing could be plainer than that.
IV.
He who puts his eye in the cup sees the whole world as one smooth plain
And though they have rendered the path plain, they have left it barren.
Only a master of style can deal in a plain manner with obvious matter,
Most plainly, Lord, the frame of sky,
That broad question, I mean, how to square that with the entire idea of the plain-error doctrine,
For it is plain that every word we speak is in some degree a diminution of our lungs by corrosion
To cause thy lovers plain.
V.
At an engagement, regardless of the station of the families involved, only four plain cakes and four sugar cakes could be served.
A Plain Cake. Work into two pounds of dough a quarter of a pound of sugar, the same of butter; add a couple of eggs, and bake in a tin.
Make smooth and plain.
We have respected rather a plain translation than to smooth our verses with the sweetness of any paraphrase.
Here is the right paraphrase. We live in a world plainly plain.
I meant plain in a good way.
In plain & natural English, I am a dreaming & therefore an indolent man,
And so dog-gone plain.
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