As easy as pie
"As easy as pie" is a popular colloquial idiom which is used to describe a task or experience as pleasurable and simple.[1][2] The phrase is often interchanged with piece of cake, which shares the same connotation.[2]
Origin
The comparison is not related to making a pie, which is not an easy thing to do, but rather to eating a pie or having a pie. There are some claims that the phrase originated in the 1920s from the Indigenous New Zealand expression "pie at" or "pie on" from the Maori term "pai" which means "good", but it was used in the Saturday Evening Post of 22 February 1913, and in 1910 by Zane Grey in 1886 in "The Young Forester," and is probably a development of the phrase "like eating pie," first recorded in "Sporting Life". In 1855, the phrase, in a slight variation was published in the book called 'Which? Right or Left?' Here it was used as 'nice as a pie'. [3]
References
- ^ Almond, Jordan (1995-01-01). Dictionary of word origins: a history of the words, expressions, and clichés we use. Citadel Press. p. 87. ISBN 978-0-8065-1713-1. Retrieved 29 November 2010.
- ^ a b Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. London, United Kingdom: Chambers Harrap Publishers. 2009. pp. sec. As.
- ^ Dictionary, The Idioms. "As easy as pie phrase origin". Theidioms.com. Retrieved 28 July 2018.
Further reading
- Flexner, Stuart Berg (1979-10-01). I hear America talking: an illustrated history of American words and phrases. Simon and Schuster. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-671-24994-6. Retrieved 29 November 2010.