child's play

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English

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WOTD – 15 May 2024

Etymology

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From child +‎ -’s +‎ play, originally referring literally to play by a child.[1]

Pronunciation

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Noun

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child's play (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic) Something particularly easy or simple.
    Synonyms: kid stuff, piece of cake
    Compared to my last job, this is child’s play.
    • 1839 (indicated as 1840), Thomas Carlyle, “Laissez-Faire”, in Chartism, London: James Fraser, […], →OCLC, pages 52–53:
      The brawny craftsman finds it no child's play to mould his unpliant rugged masses; neither is guidance of men a dilettantism: what it becomes when treated as a dilettantism, we may see!
    • 1849, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter III, in The History of England from the Accession of James II, volume I, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC, page 322:
      In every county there were elderly gentlemen who had seen service which was no child's play.
    • 1914, Robert Frost, “A Servant to Servants”, in North of Boston, London: David Nutt […], →OCLC, page 74:
      He'd pull his bars apart like bow and bow-string, / And let them go and make them twang until / His hands had worn them smooth as any ox-bow. / And then he'd crow as if he thought that child's play— / The only fun he had.
    • 1949 January–February, F. G. Roe, “I Saw Three Englands–1”, in The Railway Magazine, London: Tothill Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 11:
      I knew something of the railway engineer's uncanny genius for finding a path through such barriers if any path existed; yet I also knew the path would be no child's play.

Translations

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ “child’s play, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, July 2023; “child’s play, phrase”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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