pure and simple
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Completely and without any complications
Literally: unadulterated and uncomplicated
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
The man wants revenge, pure and simple, and he's working logically through the family, saving Stone until last.
By the mid-1980s, rioting, like the Handsworth and Broadwater Farm disorders of 1985, was being reported as a manifestation of ‘ criminality, pure and simple’(Gordon and Rosenburg, 1989:20).
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed on Wikipedia “Irreversible binomial” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29). Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “pure and simple” mean?
Completely and without any complications Literally: unadulterated and uncomplicated
Is “pure and simple” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.