Word.ws English Dictionary

plain as Salisbury

plain as Salisbury adjective: synonym of plain as day.

Adjective

plain as Salisbury (not comparable)

  1. (UK, dated, informal, simile) Synonym of plain as day.
    • ‘Your chummage ticket,’ replied Mr. Roker; ‘you’re up to that?’
      ‘Not quite,’ replied Mr. Pickwick, with a smile.
      ‘Why,’ said Mr. Roker, ‘it’s as plain as Salisbury. You’ll have a chummage ticket upon twenty-seven in the third, and them as is in the room will be your chums.’1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, “(please specify the chapter name)”, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, →OCLC
    • If I can't show you I've come by them honestly, perhaps you'd rather not have them, though, if nicely cooked and dished up, I'll be bound they can be made to prove, as plain as Salisbury, that you've no more right to the estate — nor to the name of Kerr, for all that — than that gentleman yonder.1893, Egerton Castle, Consequences, page 248
    Synonyms:
    plain as day

Synonyms of plain as Salisbury

Origin of plain as Salisbury

Presumably a pun on Salisbury Plain, or perhaps in reference to the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, which can be seen at a distance.

Questions about plain as Salisbury

What does plain as Salisbury mean?
Plain as Salisbury means synonym of plain as day.
What part of speech is plain as Salisbury?
Plain as Salisbury is an adjective.

Words near plain as Salisbury in the dictionary

  1. plain as a pikestaff
  2. plain as day
  3. plain as Dunstable highway
  4. plain as porridge
  5. plain as print
  6. plain as Salisbury
  7. plain as the nose on one's face
  8. plain ball
  9. plain bearing
  10. plain bearings
  11. plain bread

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: plain as Salisbury (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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