plain
apparent
conspicuous
evident
manifest
obvious
backcountry of certain other lands, especially Australia, designating an extensive, unsettled or sparsely populated region thought of as being uncivilized, rugged, or wild. The Canadian bush is unsettled northern forest land. Outback specifically indicates the backcountry of Australia and New Zealand, referring particularly to the arid and unsettled northerly regions of Australia: the vast untapped resources of the Australian outback.
The pampas are the great treeless plains of South America, extending from the Atlantic to the Andes, south of the Amazon River. Like the East African bush country, the pampas are used mainly for cattle grazing, the land not being fertile enough to yield much in the way of cereal crops: gauchos who ride herd out on the Argentine pampas. Range is the equivalent North American term for the same kind of countryside: cattle raised on the Wyoming range. This range country is bordered by more fertile prairie country on one side and mountainous countryside or desert on the other, intermingling features of both.
Savanna, used of country in the southeast part of the U.S., designates a tract of level, treeless land covered with low vegetation. More broadly, the term refers to a large area of tropical or subtropical grassland, as an African pasture or a South American campo, covered in part with trees and spiny shrubs, and found in regions undergoing alternate rainy and dry seasons. Tundra, by contrast, refers to a flat or rolling, treeless, often marshy plain of Arctic or near-Arctic regions, as of Siberia, the Scandinavian countries, and the Eskimo-inhabited parts of North America. The tundras have permanently frozen subsoil and are poor in vegetation, though they are covered with moss in summer and furnish forage for such animals as reindeer: Finns who raise reindeer on the tundra in northern Finland. See backcountry.
Antonyms: mountain.
These words all mean readily perceived. Plain, the most general word of the group, means clear and understandable, and suggests strongly that there is little possibility of confusion or mistake in perceiving the object concerned. [The plain fact of the matter is that the man lied; His guilt is plain — the stolen money was found in his briefcase.]
Apparent and evident are close synonyms, both indicating the easily perceived or recognizable. Of the two, apparent is perhaps more commonly used when referring to something visible, although both words are used to describe mental perceptions as well as sensory ones. [It was soon apparent to the crowd that our horse was winning the race; From the quick success of the business, it was evident that he had invested his money wisely; He spoke with evident sarcasm.] Because apparent can also mean seeming to be, as opposed to being in fact, its use may be ambiguous (especially before nouns), and evident may therefore be preferred in some contexts. For example, apparent defeat could mean that the defeat was more evident than real; evident defeat, on the other hand, simply states flatly that the defeat was plain, and makes no suggestion of reality contradicting appearance.
Obvious, manifest, and conspicuous mean immediately apparent, unmistakably true; all imply that the issue is so unequivocal and plain that contradiction would be absurd. Manifest suggests that outward signs or actions may be taken as revealing inward character; it points to openness and explicitness as qualities that make something plain: manifest disapproval of another’s actions, expressed in forthright language; The manifest bias of the judge, referring to the young defendant
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as a punk, disqualified him from presiding over the trial. Conspicuous implies that something stands out, unavoidably striking the eye or mind as different or irregular: a conspicuous defect in the cloth; a conspicuous typographical error, with one whole line of type printed upside-down; a discrepancy in the company accounts so conspicuous that no auditor could have failed to notice it. Obvious describes something too conspicuous to be concealed and too apparent to be disputed: an obvious gimmick to compensate for the playwright’s flagging invention. The word is often used to point up the disparity between form and meaning in disingenuous gestures: an obvious pitch for maintaining the status quo concealed within the high-flown plea for law and order; Though couched in elegant diplomatic language, the note obviously threw cold water on any hopes Israel may have entertained for U.S. intervention in the Middle East crisis. See clear, definite, flagrant, overt.
Antonyms: concealed , hidden , imperceptible , implicit, inconspicuous , secret .
These words refer to sets of ideas developed to accomplish a desired result. Plan is both the most informal and the most general. It can refer at one extreme to a tentative, unverbalized cluster of notions, and at the other, to a detailed final draft stating the precise methods by which to proceed: a vague plan to go there sometime; plans for a merger that filled six filing cabinets. Scheme is also informal, but is restricted in meaning either to a vague, unverbalized notion or to surreptitious or unsavory ideas. Unworkability may be implied in the former case, conspiratorial plotting in the latter: coming up with scheme after scheme for getting rich quick; their carefully worked out scheme for assassinating the prime minister.
Design and blueprint both relate to that side of plan that suggests a detailed final draft. Design can suggest harmony and order as the salient feature of the plan’, it can also suggest a symbolic rather than literal rendering of the work to be done: a building noteworthy for its simplicity of design’, a master who made the grand design but left his apprentice to fill in the details. Blueprint, by contrast, suggests minute attention to every last detail: a complete blueprint for enforcing the new welfare regulations.
Proposal can suggest tentativeness, like plan, but it strongly implies a context of collaboration through discussion, or a hierarchic situation in which approval of a plan must first be obtained: a proposal for spending the afternoon in the park; a proposal approved by the Senate but defeated in the House. Program may suggest a detailed set of proposals, but alone of all these words, it most specifically suggests a plan that is actually being carried out: the tenth anniversary of the once controversial tax program.
These words refer to an inclination to take part in pleasurable activity. Playful is the most general of these words and the most neutral in indicating any mood of levity that does not directly contribute to the accomplishing of essential or practical tasks: distracted from her sewing by the playful kitten who wanted to chase spools of thread around the room; husbands who expect to return at night to well-kept homes and to lively and playful wives. Frolicsome is an intensification of playful in that it suggests the positive presence of exuberant high spirits that make one wish to undertake madcap or zany adventures of an unplanned spur-of-the-moment sort: a group of frolicsome youngsters who decided to drive to the ocean at four in the morning. The overtone of sexual
plan
blueprint
design
program
proposal
scheme
playful
frisky
frolicsome
sportive
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