child's play
6
1.0
- noun
- /ˈtʃaɪldz pleɪ/
- Informal
:
pan comido
- I'd have thought it was child's play for you.
- mere child's play
- seem like child's play
- look like child's play
Examples
-
Guys, this is like child's play.
-
It's child's play for a man.
-
Why, it's child's play now.
-
Oh, that is child's play.
-
The convention itself was child's play.
Fiction book (1990) -
It's child's play, really.
-
It's child's play.
-
With your skills in cooking, preparing this meal is just child's play.
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For a trained driver, parallel parking in a tight space is child's play.
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Given your experience in math, solving this equation should be child's play.
Synonyms
55
3.4
An activity that is very easy or pleasant, often used with no to say something is not easy
51
1.0
Something very easy to do
33
2.1
An easy thing to do
18
1.2
An easy task that needs little effort
16
1.0
An easy task that needs little effort
16
2.1
A task that is very easy to do
4
1.7
Very easy to do with little skill
1
6.1
A task that is very easy to do
1
3.4
An easy task that you can do without much effort
1
4.4
An easy contest or task that someone wins with little effort
1
1.3
A very easy task that needs little effort
1
7.8
An easy task that needs little effort
A competition or test that is very easy to pass
How Easy
Surface Forms
Morphology
child's + play
The meaning 'activities performed by children' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'child's' (possessive of child) with 'play' (playful activity). The possessive composition is a regular, cross-linguistically common pattern, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents can readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Child's play comes from the simple games children do. Because a child's play is easy and fun, people use the phrase to mean 'very easy'.