ppl. a. (UN-1 8.)
1634. Milton, Comus, 23. All the Sea-girt Iles That like to rich and various gemms inlay The unadorned bosom of the Deep. Ibid. (1667), P. L., IV. 305. Shee as a vail down to the slender waste Her unadorned golden tresses wore.
1730. Thomson, Autumn, 213. For loveliness Needs not the foreign aid of ornament, But is when unadorn’d adorn’d the most.
1777. Sheridan, Sch. Scand., Portrait, 231. She, adorning fashion, unadorned by dress.
1813. Byron, Br. Abydos, II. ix. That dagger … No longer glitter’d at his waist, Where pistols unadorn’d were braced.
1865. W. G. Palgrave, Arabia, I. 80. It is a very simple and unadorned construction.
1871. Darwin, Desc. Man, II. xiii. (1890), 391. Eight or nine specimens … retained their unadorned winter plumage … throughout the year.
b. In transf. or fig. applications.
1647. Clarendon, Hist. Reb., I. § 142. A man … unadorned with parts of vigour and quickness.
1692. Atterbury, Serm., Ps. l. 14 (1726), I. 31. Majestick Plainness and Simplicity of Thought … Unadorn’d by Words, Unenliven’d by Figures.
1744. Akenside, Pleas. Imag., I. 550. Where Virtue … doth forsake The unadorned condition of her birth.
1796. Mme. D’Arblay, Camilla, VII. viii. The artlessness of unadorned truth.
1837. Hallam, Hist. Lit., I. iv. § 22. The speeches in this tragedy are sometimes too long, the style unadorned.
Hence Unadornedly adv., Unadornedness.
1727. Bailey (vol. II.), Plainness,… Unadornedness.
1820. Monthly Rev., XCI. 278. The merit of having recorded faithfully, and unadornedly, the observations made by him.
1842. H. Miller, First Impr. Eng., vii. (1857), 105. It was placed there, in its naked unadornedness.
