simple
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈsɪm.pəl/
ipa: [ˈsɪm.pl̩]
note: Indic
ipa: /ˈsɪmpɪl/
note: Tanglish, Kerala, intervocalic voicing
ipa: /ˈsɪmbɪɭ/
homophone: symbol
rhymes: -ɪmpəl
Forms: form: simples
Etymology: Inherited from Middle English symple, simple, from Old French and French simple, from Latin simplex (“simple”, literally “onefold”) (as opposed to duplex (“double”, literally “twofold”)), from semel (“the same”) + plicō (“I fold”). See same and fold. Compare single, singular, simultaneous, etc.
Partially displaced native English onefold.
Senses: examples: text: Dere is some simples in my closet, dat I vill not for the varld I shall leave behind.
ref: c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, […] [T]he Merrie Wiues of Windsor. […] (First Quarto), London: […] T[homas] C[reede] for Arthur Ihonson, […], published 1602, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iv]:
text: I know there are some simples, which in operation are moistening and some drying.
ref: 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 37, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:
text: [W]hat Virtue there is in this Remedy lies in the naked Simple it ſelf, as it comes over from the Indies, and in the Choice of that which is leaſt dried, or periſhed by the Voyage.
ref: a. 1700 (date written), William Temple, “Of Health and Long-life”, in Miscellanea. The Third Part. […], London: […] Jonathan Swift, […] Benjamin Tooke, […], published 1701, →OCLC, pages 183–184:
text: The first fellow that picked an herb to cure himself had a bit of pluck. Simples. Want to be careful.
ref: 1922 February, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:
text: The venerable carryall, formerly brimming with all manner of esoteric pamphlets and witch's simples, now overflowed with a cascade of soft toys, juice bottles, tissues, linen books for infants, […]
ref: 2003, Dolores Stewart Riccio, Charmed Circle, Kensington Books, →ISBN, page 12:
topics: medicine
pharmacology
sciences
glosses: A herbal preparation made from one plant, as opposed to something made from more than one plant.
glosses: A physician.
examples: text: Peter van Inwagen, for example, believes that there are no ordinary objects, no chairs or shirts or shoes. Right here there are just some simples — atoms or whatever — arranged shoe-wise.
ref: 2021 September 14, Michael David Stevens, 10:41 from the start, in Do Chairs Exist?:
topics: human-sciences
logic
mathematics
philosophy
sciences
glosses: A simple or atomic proposition.
examples: text: But it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels
ref: c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:
glosses: Something not mixed or compounded.
topics: business
manufacturing
textiles
weaving
glosses: A drawloom.
topics: business
manufacturing
textiles
weaving
glosses: Part of the apparatus for raising the heddles of a drawloom.
topics: Catholicism
Christianity
Roman-Catholicism
glosses: A feast which is not a double or a semidouble.