Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Dealing with sincerity and frankness; honest; open; speaking and acting without guile.
  • noun Sincere, frank, and honest speech or conduct; conduct or dealing that is without guile, stratagem, or disguise; sincerity and honesty in thought and act.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Practicing plain dealing; artless. See Plain dealing, under dealing.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • What answers you may extort from me by bodily agony, I cannot, to speak as a plain-dealing Christian, hold myself responsible for.

    Castle Dangerous 2008

  • Yet, to all appearance, he was plain-dealing and easy-natured, his business shrewdness was so well wadded round with fat.

    A Distinguished Provincial at Paris 2007

  • [1999] He is yet a scholar, than which kind of men there is nothing so simple, so sincere, none better, they are most part harmless, honest, upright, innocent, plain-dealing men.

    Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

  • My plain-dealing with Mr. Lovelace, on seeing him again, and the free dislike I expressed to his ways, his manners, and his contrivances, as well as to his speeches, have obliged him to recollect himself a little.

    Clarissa Harlowe 2006

  • He paused, and seemed a little at a loss: and I was going to give him still stronger and more personal instances of my plain-dealing; when in came my uncle Antony.

    Clarissa Harlowe 2006

  • And yet at times he wants to build up a merit for sincerity or plain-dealing, by saying free things.

    Sir Charles Grandison 2006

  • Common sense and American know-how would lead plain-dealing Americans to conclude that Chevron cannot evade the law.

    "Thank You Chevron, May I Have Another?" 2006

  • It is necessary, in some one of my letters to my dear friends, that I should write so clearly as to put this matter out of all doubt: and to whom can I better address myself with an explicitness that can admit of no mistake, than to that uncle who professes the highest regard for plain-dealing and sincerity?

    Clarissa Harlowe 2006

  • Downright and plain-dealing, and abhorring to be deceived or to deceive, he was esteemed in the country for his sense and probity.

    Representative Men 2006

  • You will excuse my plain-dealing in turn: for I must observe, that if I had not the just opinion I have of the sacred nature of this office I have undertaken, some passages in the letter you have favoured me with would convince me that I ought not to excuse myself from acting in it.

    Clarissa Harlowe 2006

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