I. adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a plain ring
▪
She wore a plain gold ring.
flood plain
plain chocolate
plain clothes (= ordinary clothes that the police wear in order not to be recognized )
▪
He was arrested by officers in plain clothes.
plain English (= English that is easy to understand )
▪
leaflets written in plain English
plain flour
plain paper (= with nothing written or printed on it )
▪
The package was wrapped in plain brown paper.
plain/honest/fair dealing (= a particular way of doing business )
▪
a reputation for fair dealing
plain/simple (= without anything added or without decoration )
▪
He liked eating simple food, nothing spicy.
simple/plain/basic/sheer common sense (= very obviously sensible )
▪
Locking your doors at night is simple common sense.
the simple/plain/naked truth (= the truth, with nothing added, left out, or hidden )
▪
The simple truth is that there isn’t enough money to pay for it.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
as
▪
You can even use a word processor, as long as it will let you save the files as plain text.
▪
Timothy wouldn't want a woman as plain as she.
▪
Frans Hals had painted portraits of girls who could only be described as plain , but something lively and piquant redeemed them.
▪
It is as plain and simple as that.
▪
I can remember that as plain as anything, coming over there.
▪
It is important to make this as plain as possible because it is so tentative.
▪
Amongst a hundred persons, the lover stands out as plain as the shining moon in heaven amongst the stars.
▪
But music types in Manhattan and Hollywood say that they can see a country act as plain as a barn door.
just
▪
Soporific or just plain asleep commentators.
▪
Moby gorges on brutal love and just plain not caring.
▪
Are you on the side of progress, or just plain old protest for its own sake?
▪
All of that, and their shows are giddy, engaging, lighthearted and just plain fun.
▪
Where everything was just plain and simple, laughing and joking the norm.
▪
But Mr Manion, some people are just plain miserable all the time.
▪
Was it an accident, was I pushed, or was I just plain stupid?
▪
City growth proponents denounced their opponents as mean-spirited, power-hungry, and just plain stupid.
quite
▪
I made it quite plain he would go before she did, and I rather think he has accepted the statusquo.
▪
But what Godolphin saw seemed quite plain to him.
▪
Yet market buildings, even when they are quite plain , are usually attractive features of a town.
▪
But then she was no longer classed as a shop assistant, Mrs Miller had made that quite plain .
▪
Not quite right, not quite plain enough or narrow enough, but getting there.
▪
The design is quite plain , similar to that of an old wooden target arrow.
▪
The answer seemed to her quite plain .
▪
The Gestapo captain had made his feelings about Kruger quite plain , accusing him of wasting the Gestapo's time.
too
▪
But the dressmaker had obviously decided it was too plain and added a few frills to liven it up a bit.
▪
He was afraid that his emotions were too plain on his face.
▪
Hadn't Rourke made that all too plain ?
▪
To avoid this looking too plain and the break-off rows being very abrupt try using a small pattern to divide the colours.
▪
The look that had passed between the Empress and Brien fitzCount was all too plain now.
▪
The idea of breaking into the Colonel's den never occurred to me - it was just too plain terrifying.
very
▪
When he married her, she was a reserved, very plain girl who played the harp in a provincial symphony orchestra.
▪
The capitals on the columns are very plain .
▪
But their styles were really very dissimilar and that became very plain from the moment really that Mr Callaghan took over.
▪
I ran for Congress in Wyoming and was whipped by a very plain but prominently named man.
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Rooms are very plain , shared facilities only, but quite spacious.
▪
Visitors to Crufts and other shows will know that these metal-sided stalls are usually left very plain .
▪
She made it very plain what she wanted.
▪
And she makes it very plain that she doesn't see the fun of cooking for me!
■ NOUN
chocolate
▪
Spread white chocolate layer over plain chocolate in tin, then add remaining chocolate layer.
▪
Cool. 4 Melt the white and plain chocolate in separate bowls over hot water.
▪
Chill until set. 3 Melt the remaining plain chocolate and the white chocolate in separate bowls over hot water.
▪
Melt the remaining plain chocolate in a pan with the cream.
▪
Why couldn't those concerned realize that plain chocolate combined best with ice-cream?
▪
Mix cheeses. melt plain chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water.
clothes
▪
Behind them in a doorway is a man wearing plain clothes and dark glasses.
▪
Normal stores have security people dressed in such plain clothes you wonder how they can afford to do any shopping.
▪
In the morning, she rose early and dressed in her plainest clothes , flounces and frills had no place in business.
▪
We recruit uniformed officers into plain clothes so that people like yourself, who are being eliminated, won't feel under pressure.
▪
They were in plain clothes and, in his opinion, drunk, arrogant and overpowering.
▪
Female speaker We've got extra foot patrols in uniform and plain clothes to prevent an attack and to pick up information.
▪
Mr Montesinos was escorted by agents in plain clothes into a helicopter shortly after arriving at Lima airport.
▪
In uniform and in plain clothes , roughly 50 were on different shifts asking each shopper for more information.
face
▪
When putting the ring together I alternate the segments marked face up then plain face up to create a balanced pattern.
▪
A smile lit up her plain face as Juliet approached.
▪
The smile melted from the fat, plain face when Blanche introduced herself.
▪
With a fierce look on her tough, plain face .
▪
This small, uninteresting woman with short greying hair and a plain face ?
fact
▪
For the plain fact is, we are saying many different things.
▪
The plain fact was that a combination of market forces and gross mismanagement had thrown Salomon Brothers into deep trouble.
▪
The plain fact is that there are steps that Cleveland should be taking to improve the way that it manages education spending.
▪
The plain fact was she had been terrified by her own reflection, and this was not lightly to be dismissed.
▪
The plain fact is, however, that behaviour, whether it is deliberate or not, always influences people.
▪
He asserted the plain fact of the existence of differences in taste.
▪
He'd told Willi the plain facts .
▪
The plain fact is that us women are fussy.
flour
▪
Thicken towards the end of cooking if necessary with plain flour mixed with a little water and a few drops of bottled gravy browning.
▪
Appendix B Recipes for play dough Mix plain flour and water with a little salt.
▪
Sift the strong plain flour into a warm mixing bowl.
glass
▪
Fit a plain glass or polaroid filter over the lens Load the cassette into the camcorder in dust-free conditions.
▪
Glass with coffee pots and metal and found magazine pictures and glass with just plain glass.
▪
The original stained glass window was destroyed by vandals in the 1960s and replaced by a plain glass one.
▪
The lenses were of plain glass .
knitting
▪
Start at base of face. 2 Knit three rows of plain knitting .
▪
Once you have completed a few rows of plain knitting , you can prepare to start.
▪
Continue in plain knitting with dark colour.
▪
When this happens, knit four rows of plain knitting .
▪
Knit a few rows of plain knitting and prepare to try Card No. 18.
language
▪
Article 5 imposes the plain language requirement and the obligation to interpret ambiguities in the way most favourable to the consumer.
▪
A weekly publication that analyzes some 1, 700 different stocks, Value Line is written in plain language .
▪
We shall use plain language in all our dealings with you and provide clear statements of terms and conditions.
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This is an entertaining book that explains the basics of buying stock with colorful illustrations and plain language .
▪
Our subsequent telephone conversation was a study in plain language , but McFarlane held his ground and made no apologies.
paper
▪
Therefore, the letter was on plain paper .
▪
Displaying the results Smart presentation of results should always be done on plain paper .
▪
All this information must also be included on captions, and if plain paper is being used the address should be added.
sailing
▪
But it's not all plain sailing .
▪
I recognized that all would not be plain sailing .
▪
But it wasn't going to be all plain sailing .
▪
However, it was not all plain sailing .
▪
Mind you, it was not all plain sailing for the Merseyside comic making her Liverpool debut in the role.
▪
Get the mitres right and the rest is plain sailing .
sight
▪
Thou shalt not leave illegal things lying around in plain sight .
text
▪
Not long ago, email was a strictly plain text affair.
▪
It would all require a massive decipherment, a conversion to plain text .
▪
Remember to load and save the file in plain text mode.
▪
Mostly you get reams of plain text .
▪
You can even use a word processor, as long as it will let you save the files as plain text .
▪
The data transferred may be plain text , hypertext, images, or anything else.
▪
If we only allow ourselves plain text as input, the output is always something of a guess.
▪
Save it as plain text to a file named pon.cli.
tile
▪
Because Sandtoft are producing the very first machine made clay plain tile to match the Humberside pantile.
▪
So at last you can specify profiled and plain tiles together.
▪
Plus the plain tile eave coursing so often seen with pantile roofs in the North East.
▪
However, it was necessary to renew the roof covering of clay plain tiles with identical material.
▪
Tiles are less durable than slates, but good quality clay plain tiles can easily last for sixty years.
▪
Some concrete and clay plain tiles originally intended for roofing can also be used for cladding walls.
truth
▪
The plain truth was that he hadn't witnessed what was going on behind him.
▪
The whole place was undeniably fouled; but there was another plain truth which was worse than this: she was home.
▪
That is not a metaphor, it is the plain truth .
▪
But the plain truth is that we can not say what was really done for the children or what the results were.
▪
But they contain more plain truth than he is able to recognise.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
as plain as a pikestaff
under plain cover/under separate cover
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪
plain vanilla ice cream
▪
a plain blue suit
▪
Catherine, who had been rather plain as a child, was now an attractive young woman.
▪
Do you have any plain white shirts?
▪
He put the letter in a plain brown envelope.
▪
Miles was the plain one in an otherwise good-looking family.
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She spoke slowly and carefully, using plain simple language.
▪
The chapel was a small, plain , white-washed building.
▪
The document is written in plain English.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪
Cool for 1 minute, then trim using a plain pastry cutter which is slightly larger than the biscuits.
▪
Fit a plain glass or polaroid filter over the lens Load the cassette into the camcorder in dust-free conditions.
▪
Once again, the desirability of clear terms of contract, coupled perhaps with an unambiguous job description, is plain .
▪
Or is it just plain indifference?
▪
Stuffed hard-boiled eggs, most often called deviled eggs, can be spicy, plain or very exotic.
▪
The company makes plain and sweet biscuits and soda crackers.
II. noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
central
▪
Their native land consisted of a central plain surrounded by mountains.
▪
Presently the harbor itself became visible across the central Oahu plain , a film of morning mist hovering over it.
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The Cheyenne, who also once lived in Minnesota, hunted the region of the Black Hills and the central plains .
▪
The central plains were where the first railroads crossed, so they were the first to be settled.
coastal
▪
The Hinkley Point development in fact erupts with total incongruity from the flat coastal plain which borders the Bristol Channel.
▪
We sat with our backs against the trig point and gazed down like Gods on the coastal plain of Thassos.
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For the Downland, sheep remained dominant; it was in the coastal plain and Weald that a new impetus was given.
▪
Macadam until we run out of the coastal plain and start to climb.
▪
How different was the rich, irrigated coastal plain !
▪
Undulating coastal plains and other ungraded lowlands, underlain by permafrost, in summer form some of the tundra's wettest areas.
▪
The outward journey was quite uneventful as far as the Wadi Tamit, a steep defile leading down the escarpment on to the coastal plain .
▪
Where the road passed through the coastal plains there were farms with cattle grazing on knee-high grass.
fertile
▪
When it dried up, the salts sank as the rains washed top soil down to create fertile plains .
flat
▪
The Hinkley Point development in fact erupts with total incongruity from the flat coastal plain which borders the Bristol Channel.
▪
Impossibly, incredibly, it was no longer a monolith rearing high above a flat plain .
▪
This wide coastal belt is a generally flat plain , only partially wooded, containing little building stone.
▪
The valley from the hill to the massif was all flat plains covered with elephant grass.
▪
The train stopped somewhere in the middle of a flat plain and we marched eastwards.
▪
It was a 3, 000-foot granite slab, rising in total isolation from a flat plain .
▪
The camp lies on a flat plain , completely without vegetation.
▪
There was deposition in large alluvial fans stretching out from the mountains in the south and the north-east into the flat plain .
grassy
▪
Towards the north these turn into pine forests and eventually thin out to form the grassy plains of Kislev.
▪
Dry grassy plains or open scrub, semi-deserts.
great
▪
There was no sign of the great plains the count had spoken of.
▪
The Doctor stood up, taking in the distant sights of the great plain .
high
▪
Situated on a high plain , behind Rennes-le-Chateau, La Valdieu was at the end of a very rough track.
▪
Particularly on the high plains , Lewis and Clark camped at places where nothing as important has happened sInce.
▪
Rangers' victory does not elevate the Motherwells and Airdries to a higher plain .
▪
Why not plant millions of them on the high plains to break the wind and conserve the soil?
▪
Away to the high plains rolling in waves to the rising final chord of the Rocky Mountains!
▪
Out on the high plains , the problem is of a different nature.
open
▪
It also gives them protection as they venture across the open plains of sand, where there are no hiding places.
▪
This one hobbled about gamely, seemingly eager to get back to the open plains .
▪
Ring after ring of rough-hewn stone walls thunder their way across the open plain on the deserted south-eastern edge of the city.
southern
▪
February is the season of the great migration journeys to the southern plains , a time of rebirth for the herds.
▪
The rivers of the southern plains are dry much of their length, much of the year.
▪
On the far southern plains , the oil towns of Plainview and Midland and Odessa rise like off-shore drilling rigs.
vast
▪
The altar sits on a vast plain over which many battles have been fought.
▪
I recall high school as one vast , Midwestern plain of unhappiness.
▪
First his small plane is seen searching the vast plains for her village.
▪
Where did safety lie on that vast , hostile plain ?
■ NOUN
flood
▪
Her dammed-up intelligence overflowed like a flood plain .
▪
The little town crowns a low plateau just out of reach of the flood plain of the nearby Deerfield River.
▪
The already over-stretched funds can not deal with serious infrastructure solutions to facilitate the development of flood plains .
▪
On the one hand, some Mars probes have transmitted pictures of what appear to be dried Martian rivers and flood plains .
▪
There is also talk of investing in flood defences and preventing building development on flood plains .
■ VERB
cross
▪
As we were crossing the plain of Birzebbugia nearing the air station, we were surprised to hear a sharp report.
make
▪
He made his displeasure plain to the prime minister.
▪
Carrying alluvial sands from the Rocky Mountains, they helped make the plains .
▪
Mr Mitchell made his hatred plain .
▪
Notices attached to them make this plain .
▪
Only Avens made a pass at her, and when she made plain what her answer was he grew cold and distant.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪
the plains of Nebraska
▪
the central Oahu plain
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪
At night there were no longer any bonfires to be seen, either on the hill or way out on the surrounding plain .
▪
Some smooth plains consist of infill in some medium sized craters.
▪
The plain below where the buildings once stood is as empty as when Crazy Horse surrendered there.
▪
The Cheyenne, who also once lived in Minnesota, hunted the region of the Black Hills and the central plains.
▪
The mica dams dry out to form white plains, with a consistency of putty.
▪
This impressive stone building has a commanding site on a hill above the surrounding plain .
▪
Tipi poles were made of the slender trunks of young lodgepole pines, and were rare items on the treeless plains.
▪
Today, most travellers who see the plains do it from thirty thousand feet.
III. adverb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
old
▪
Tackling these more stubborn obstacles will boil down to better schools and plain old dollars and cents.
▪
Another useful salt is plain old chemical fertilizer.
▪
Once there were plain old credit cards.
■ VERB
just
▪
Many forms of worms are collected with characteristics ranging from beauty to just plain wormy.
make
▪
When he asked the new tsar to give land to the peasants he made plain the other.
▪
The revolution of 1905 had made plain the disruptive power of the industrial labour force.
▪
I shall make plain our position on today's business.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪
Tell me plainly what you want.
▪
The leaflet plainly states what the party's position is on immigration.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪
He possesses plain good sense, and is in the full confidence of his Countrymen.
▪
Stella Duncan was just plain lost.
▪
There was another little room, the Quiet Room, plain concrete block walls without chairs or windows.
▪
They'd all queue up-excited, mistrustful or just plain scared.