easy
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈiːzɪ/
ipa: /ˈiːziː/
ipa: /ˈizi/
rhymes: -iːzi
Forms: form: easier
form: more easy
form: easiest
form: most easy
form: aisy
form: easie
form: eazy
form: EZ
Etymology: From Middle English esy, eesy, partly from Middle English ese (“ease”) + -y, equivalent to ease + -y, and partly from Anglo-Norman eisé from Old French aisié (“eased, at ease, at leisure”), past participle of aisier (“to put at ease”), from aise (“empty space, elbow room, opportunity”), of uncertain origin. See ease. Merged with Middle English ethe, eathe (“easy”), from Old English īeþe, from Proto-Germanic *auþuz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂éwtus (“empty, lonely”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ew-. Compare also Old Saxon ōþi, Old High German ōdi, Old Norse auðr, all meaning "easy, vacant, empty." More at ease, eath.
Senses: examples: text: Now that I know it's taken care of, I can rest easy at night.
text: “[…] She takes the whole thing with desperate seriousness. But the others are all easy and jovial—thinking about the good fare that is soon to be eaten, about the hired fly, about anything.”
ref: 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVI, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
qualifier: now rare except in certain expressions
glosses: Comfortable; at ease.
examples: text: It's often easy to wake up but hard to get up.
text: The teacher gave an easy test to her students.
text: Now the easiest sell in traveldom is made even easier.
ref: 1963, American Society of Travel Agents, ASTA Travel News, volume 32, page 55:
text: I realized this all too well when as a seminarian I got stuck with the job of recruiting the washees for a Maundy Thursday service. It's much easier to be the one down on the floor with the basin[…]
ref: 1995, Margaret Guenther, Toward Holy Ground, page 43:
text: As the world's drug habit shows, governments are failing in their quest to monitor every London window-box and Andean hillside for banned plants. But even that Sisyphean task looks easy next to the fight against synthetic drugs. No sooner has a drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one.
ref: 2013 August 10, “A new prescription”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848, archived from the original on 21 Sep 2020:
text: You could just use ordinary shop-bought kecap manis to marinade the meat, but making your own is easy, has a far more elegant fragrance and is, above all, such a great brag! Flavouring kecap manis is an intensely personal thing, so try this version now and next time cook the sauce down with crushed, split lemongrass and a shredded lime leaf.
ref: 2015 October 27, Matt Preston, The Simple Secrets to Cooking Everything Better, Plum, →ISBN, page 192:
text: Toyota spokesman Paul Hogard said the automaker wants speedometers to be easy to read, so there’s value in placing the typical operating speed of American cars, 45 mph to 70 mph, he said, at the top of the speedometer, which is the easiest place on the speedometer for the driver to read.
ref: 2022 September 10, Matt McFarland, “Why your car’s speedometer goes up to 160 mph (even when your car can’t)”, in CNN Business:
text: President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to make it easier for his administration to deport people to South Sudan and other countries that are not their homeland, the latest in a series of controversial immigration policies the administration has put before the conservative-majority high court.
ref: 2025 May 27, John Fritze, Angélica Franganillo Díaz and Devan Cole, “Trump asks Supreme Court to make it easier to deport migrants to South Sudan and other third-party countries”, in CNN:
glosses: Requiring little skill or effort.
examples: text: Rich people live in easy circumstances.
text: an easy chair
glosses: Causing ease; giving comfort, or freedom from care or labour.
examples: text: easy manners; an easy style
text: the easy vigour of a line
ref: 1711 May, [Alexander Pope], An Essay on Criticism, London: […] W[illiam] Lewis […]; and sold by W[illiam] Taylor […], T[homas] Osborn[e] […], and J[ohn] Graves […], →OCLC:
glosses: Free from constraint, harshness, or formality; unconstrained; smooth.
examples: text: She has a reputation for being easy; they say she slept with half the senior class.
glosses: Consenting readily to sex.
raw_tags: of a woman
examples: text: He gain'd their easy hearts.
ref: 1697, Virgil, “(please specify the book number)”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:
text: He is[…] too tyrannical to be an easy monarch.
ref: 1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC:
glosses: Not making resistance or showing unwillingness; tractable; yielding; compliant.
examples: text: The market is easy.
topics: business
finance
glosses: Not straitened as to money matters; opposed to tight.
Synonyms: sense: comfortable
word: relaxed
sense: comfortable
word: relaxing
sense: not difficult
word: light
sense: not difficult
word: eath
sense: consenting readily to sex
word: fast
sense: requiring little skill or effort
word: soft
sense: requiring little skill or effort
word: trivial
sense: requiring little skill or effort
word: facile
word: as a duck takes to water
word: basic
word: easy
word: easy as 123
word: easy as ABC
word: easy as cake
word: easy as pie
word: easy as falling off a log
word: easy as rolling off a log
word: easy-breezy
word: easy peasy
word: easy peasy Japanesey
word: easy peasy lemon squeezy
word: effortless
word: idiotproof
word: like a duck takes to water
word: like falling off a log
word: like riding a bike
word: like robbing a baby
word: like shelling peas
word: like shooting fish in a barrel
word: like taking candy from a baby
word: natural
word: painless
word: piss-easy
word: plain-sailing
word: simple
word: simple as kiss your hand
word: simplex
word: smooth
word: straightforward
word: troublefree
word: unchallenging
word: uncomplicated
word: undemanding
word: undifficult
word: yezzy
Derived terms: sense: as
word: easy as falling
sense: as
word: rolling off a log
word: easily
word: easiness
word: easy as 123
word: easy as ABC
word: easy as cake
word: easy as pie
word: easybeat
word: easy-breezy
word: easy chair
word: easy-chair
word: easycore
word: easy does it
word: easy-drinking
word: easy for you to say
word: easygoing
word: easy-going
word: easyish
word: easy like
word: easy listening
word: easy mark
word: easy meat
word: easy money
word: easy on the eye(s)
word: easy peas(e)y
word: easy-peas(e)y
word: easy Japanesey
word: easy lemon squeezy
word: easy pumpkin peasy
word: easy pickings
word: easy prey
word: easy street
word: easy target
word: free and easy
word: free-and-easy
word: go easy
word: hard-easy effect
word: have an easy time of it
word: have it easy
word: honors easy
word: honours easy
word: I'm easy
word: it is easy to be wise after the event
word: it is easy to find a stick to beat a dog
word: jack-easy
word: my very easy method just speeds up naming planets
word: NP-easy
word: over easy
word: overeasy
word: piss-easy
word: rest easy
word: semi-easy chair
word: stand easy
word: steezy
word: supereasy
word: take easy
word: take it easy
word: take the easy way out
word: there isn't any easy way to say this
word: uneasily
word: uneasiness
word: woman of easy virtue
Related terms: word: ease
word: easy thing