easy for you to say
3
9.1
- idiom
- Informal
:
fácil decirlo
- I mean, I'm always stunned by people who reply to me pushing patients and replying in the comments or DM or e-mail of like, easy for you to say rich guy, right?
Examples
-
I guess this is easy for you to say if you do not have to service 35 to 40 men day after day, week after week, month after month!
Blog text (8) -
It's easy for you to say that I should try harder when you're not the one facing the challenges.
-
That is very easy for you to say.
Blog text (8) -
That's easy for you to say.
-
That's easy for you to say!
Fiction book (1991) -
Easy for you to say if you're one of the kids who can afford a nice car.
Blog text (8) -
Well, it's pretty easy for you to say, all right, I'm going to stay at a distance R from that enemy and I'm just going to sort of group up there.
-
When he said the project would be simple, I thought, that's easy for you to say since you have all the experience.
-
She dismissed my concerns, making it clear that it was easy for you to say when she wasn't in my position.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is transparently built from the parts: 'easy' (simple) combined with the perspective marker 'for you to say' yields the interpretation that making the remark is simple for the addressee though it may not be for the speaker. This adjective + 'for + person + to' infinitival construction is common and follows regular compositional grammar, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words and basic syntax will readily infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
The phrase easy for you to say comes from a simple picture: imagine someone warm and dry telling a person in the rain to 'stay calm'. The words easy, you, say show the speaker finds the 'advice' simple because they are not in the hard situation, so the phrase means 'advice is easy to give' when you are not the one facing the problem.