Word of the Day: Plain and Plane
plain / plan
adjective
- unadorned
Stained glass, engraved glass, frosted glass; give me plain glass.
John Fowles, 1926-1643
- free of extraneous matter; pure
If you have love, even plain cold water is sweet.
Jung Chang, 1952-
- clear to the eye or ear
As I understand it, laws, commands, rules and edicts are for those who have not the light which makes plain the pathway.
Anne Hutchinson, 1591-1643
- easily understood
Mystery is but another name for ignorance; if we were omniscient, all would be perfectly plain!
Tryon Edwards, 1809-1894
- sheer; utter
Nothing can substitute for plain hard work.
Andre Agassi, 1970-
- without pretension or elegance; ordinary
My manner of living is plain.
George Washington, 1732-1799
- of food, not highly seasoned or rich
Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet.
Joseph Addison, 1672-1719
- flat; level
It’s not always plain sailing…especially when you’re flying.
Brendan Rodgers, 1973-
- common
There’s absolutely no limit to what plain, ordinary, working people can accomplish if they’re given the opportunity and encouragement to do their best.
Sam Walton, 1918-1992
- lacking beauty
A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.
- Scott Fitzgerald, 1896-1940
noun
- an area of level or treeless land
If you don’t scale the mountain, you can’t view the plain.
Chinese Proverb
adverb
- simply and clearly
There will be days when you feel defeated, exhausted, and plain old beat-up by life’s whiplash.
Sheri L. Dew, 1953-
plane / plān
noun
- a flat, level surface
Painting does what we cannot do – it brings a three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional plane.
Chuck Jones, 1912-2002
- a surface on which any two points form a line completely on that surface
We can in fact first place the beam of rays of moving positive atomic ions in a plane perpendicular to the axis in which we see the spectral lines emitted by them.
Johannes Stark, 1874-1957
- a level of consciousness
There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955
- a shortened form of the word ‘airplane’
Though a plane is not the ideal place really to think, to reassess or reevaluate things, it is a great place to have the illusion of doing so, and often the illusion will suffice.
Shana Alexander, 1925-2005
- a tool for smoothing a wood surface
Hand planes come in a bewildering variety of sizes.
popularwoodworking.com
verb
- to make smooth; to level
Each plank he planed, each nail he drove, each thing he made molded him.
from ‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy, 1961-