Word.ws English Dictionary

plainclothes

plainclothes adjective: of a police officer, wearing ordinary civilian clothes instead of a uniform, in order to avoid detection.

Adjective

plainclothes (not comparable)

  1. Of a police officer, wearing ordinary civilian clothes instead of a uniform, in order to avoid detection.

Noun

plainclothes pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) Ordinary civilian clothes, rather than uniform.
    Synonyms:
    mufti

Synonyms of plainclothes

Forms of plainclothes

alternative formplain-clothes
alternative formplain clothes

Words formed from plainclothes

Phrases with plainclothes

Questions about plainclothes

What does plainclothes mean?
Plainclothes means of a police officer, wearing ordinary civilian clothes instead of a uniform, in order to avoid detection.
What part of speech is plainclothes?
Plainclothes can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near plainclothes in the dictionary

  1. plainant
  2. plainants
  3. plainchant
  4. plainchants
  5. plainclothed
  6. plainclothes
  7. plainclothes man
  8. plainclothes men
  9. plainclothesman
  10. plainclothesmen
  11. plainclothespeople

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: plainclothes (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-plainclothes.wav.

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