Word.ws English Dictionary

plein air

plein air adjective: done outdoors.

Adjective

plein air (not comparable)

  1. (painting) Done outdoors.
    • The general editor, Dr William Ruminant, directing the full resources of his Institute, operating at the highest levels of textual terrain, could care less for the plein air scenics of mere biography.2014, Guy Mantis, “Afterword”, in Page Nelson, edited by William Ruminant, A Book of Emblems […], revised edition, Another Sparrow Press, →ISBN, page 1
    • The next day, I began sketching out a new painting. I didn't need a photograph or a plein air study; the image was with me all the time, floating at the edge of my consciousness.2021, Ed Tarkington, The Fortunate Ones, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, page 87

Forms of plein air

alternative formplein-air

Origin of plein air

Borrowed from French plein air.

Words formed from plein air

Questions about plein air

What does plein air mean?
Plein air means done outdoors.
What part of speech is plein air?
Plein air is an adjective.

Words near plein air in the dictionary

  1. Pleiadians
  2. pleiads
  3. pleid
  4. pleids
  5. Pleiku
  6. plein air
  7. plein-air
  8. pleinairism
  9. pleinairist
  10. pleinairists
  11. pleio-

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: plein air (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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