royal road

See also: Royal Road

English

Etymology

In reference to Euclid, who is said to have told a king that there was no royal road to geometry. In the musical sense, a calque of Japanese 王道進行, itself deriving from a calque of sense 1.

Noun

royal road (plural royal roads)

1. An easy or straightforward procedure for achieving a goal; a procedure that requires little effort.
   • 1942 May-June, T. F. Cameron, “An Outline of Railway Traffic Operation”, in Railway Magazine, page 138:

     There is no royal road to success in transport work.

2. A chord progression, IV^M7–V⁷–iii⁷–vi, common in Japanese pop music.

Translations

easy way

• Finnish: helppo tie
• French: voie royale (fr) f
• German: Königsweg (de) m
• Japanese: 王道 (ja)
• Polish: łatwy sposób m
• Spanish: camino real m
• Swedish: kungsväg (sv) c

Further reading

• “royal road”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “royal road” in Idioms and phrases, TheFreeDictionary.com, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.: Farlex, Inc., 2003–2025.
• “royal road to”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.