simple

Etymology

From Middle English symple, simple, from Old French and French simple, from Latin simplex (“simple”, literally “onefold”) (as opposed to duplex (“double”, literally “twofold”)), from semel (“the same”) + plicō (“I fold”). See same and fold. Compare single, singular, simultaneous, etc. Partially displaced native English onefold.

adj

1. Uncomplicated; lacking complexity; taken by itself, with nothing added.
   Primitive people, colossally ignorant of the cause of disease and of curative processes, attributed to supernatural agencies any causes and effects for which their simple minds could give no natural explanations. 1940, Rosetta E. Clarkson, Green Enchantments: The Magic Spell of Gardens, The Macmillan Company, page 253
2. Easy; not difficult.
   There is no simple way to define precisely a complex arrangement of parts, however homely the object may appear to be. 2001, Sydney I. Landau, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, Cambridge University Press, page 167
3. Without ornamentation; plain.
4. Free from duplicity; guileless, innocent, straightforward.
5. Undistinguished in social condition; of no special rank.
6. (archaic) Trivial; insignificant.
7. (now colloquial, euphemistic) Feeble-minded; foolish.
8. (heading, technical) Structurally uncomplicated.
   1. (chemistry, pharmacology) Consisting of one single substance; uncompounded.
   2. (mathematics) Of a group: having no normal subgroup.
   3. (botany) Not compound, but possibly lobed.
   4. (of a steam engine) Using steam only once in its cylinders, in contrast to a compound engine, where steam is used more than once in high-pressure and low-pressure cylinders.
      Chesapeake & Ohio turned to simple articulateds, for instance, simply because its Alleghany tunnels would not accommodate the low-pressure forward cylinders of larger compounds. 1959, David P. Morgan, editor, Steam's Finest Hour, Kalmbach Publishing Co., page 6
   5. (zoology) Consisting of a single individual or zooid; not compound.
      a simple ascidian
   6. (mineralogy) Homogenous.
9. (obsolete) Mere; not other than; being only.
   Garak: Who would want to kill me, a simple tailor? / Odo: A simple tailor? A simple tailor who used to be an agent of the Obsidian Order! April 24, 1995, Improbable Cause (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), season 3, number 20 (Science Fiction), Paramount Domestic Television, →OCLC

noun

1. (pharmacology) A herbal preparation made from one plant, as opposed to something made from more than one plant.
   The venerable carryall, formerly brimming with all manner of esoteric pamphlets and witch's simples, now overflowed with a cascade of soft toys, juice bottles, tissues, linen books for infants, […] 2003, Dolores Stewart Riccio, Charmed Circle, Kensington Books, page 12
2. (obsolete, by extension) A physician.
3. (logic) A simple or atomic proposition.
4. (obsolete) Something not mixed or compounded.
5. (weaving) A drawloom.
6. (weaving) Part of the apparatus for raising the heddles of a drawloom.
7. (Roman Catholicism) A feast which is not a double or a semidouble.

verb

1. (transitive, intransitive, archaic) To gather simples, i.e. medicinal herbs.