as easy as pie

A

as easy as pie

Meaning | Synonyms

  • an easy thing
  • a very simple task
  • child’s play
  • a snap
  • a cinch
  • It is a comparison between a task and pie, the latter being very easy and hence the former depicts the same too.

Example Sentences

  1. The results are sure to be good this time since the exam was as easy as a pie.
  2. I went to work on a Saturday thinking that the task will take long to complete but it was actually as easy as a pie.
  3. She needs reassurances on contracts which are as easy as a pie. I cannot keep counselling her all the time.
  4. To write this paper was as easy as a pie.
  5. For my friend Maria the juggling is as easy as a pie.
  6. Why are you so worried about car driving licence test, believe me it’s easy as pie.

Origin

A pie is not easy to make, so the comparison is not related to making a pie. It is in fact related to having or eating a pie. The phrase came to existence in the 1900s in the United States of America. A pie was use to represent something that was pleasant and exchanged at joyous occasions. 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’. Prior to this Mark Twain used the phrase ‘as polite as a pie’.

It is also believed that this idiom was originally derived from the aboriginal New Zealand phrase “pie at” or “pie on” from the Maori word “pai” which means “good” in 1920s. Though much realistic evidence of the idiom are related to the Saturday Evening Post on 22 February 1913, and by Zane Grey in “The Young Forester” in 1910.

Another possible theory of the origin of the phrase may be related to the expression “like eating pie,” originally printed in 1886 in “Sporting Life”.

Synonyms

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