simple

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   unornamented

   a simple country schoolhouse

2. 2
   adj

   Uncomplicated; lacking complexity; taken by itself, with nothing added.

   We are engaged in a great work, a treatise on our river fortifications, perhaps? But since when did army officers afford the luxury of amanuenses in this simple republic?

3. 3
   adj

   Easy; not difficult.

   There is no simple way to define precisely a complex arrangement of parts, however homely the object may appear to be.

4. 4
   adj

   Free from duplicity; guileless, innocent, straightforward.

   Full many fine men go upon my score, as simple as I stand here, and I trust them.

5. 5
   adj

   Undistinguished in social condition; of no special rank.

   Garak: Who would want to kill me, a simple tailor? / Odo: A simple tailor? A simple tailor who used to be an agent of the Obsidian Order!

6. 6
   adj

   Trivial; insignificant.

   ‘That was a symple cause,’ seyde Sir Trystram, ‘for to sle a good knyght for seyynge well by his maystir.’

7. 7
   adj

   Mere; not other than; being only.

   A medicine […] whose simple touch / Is powerful to araise King Pepin.

8. 8
   noun

   A herbal preparation made from one plant, as opposed to something made from more than one plant.

   Dere is some simples in my closet, dat I vill not for the varld I shall leave behind.

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English symple, simple, from Old French simple, from Latin simplex (“simple”, literally “onefold”) (as opposed to duplex (“double”, literally “twofold”)), from semel (“the same”) + plicō (“to fold”). See same and fold. Compare single, singular, simultaneous, etc. Partially displaced native English onefold.