Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Adjective Phrase 52. The adjective phrase
today is easy as pie. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. If someone says
that something is as easy as pie, it means that it is very easy. All right. Let's
continue. The origin probably arrived from the idea that the word pie was
thought of as a pleasant uncomplicated thing to do so in the past. People used
to think of the word as Pie as being easy and uncomplicated.
Of course, the reference is in regard to eating the pie not making the pie which
is often actually a lot of hard work and effort. You know, that's why even today
this is why most pies today are store-bought and not homemade. Yeah. Even
though our technology is a lot better today, it still a lot of work. You know, it
does. Usually most pies don't cost that much money and if you figured out all
the ingredients you put into it. All the time of baking and getting it ready,
especially for like a single person or a single family, it may not be worth it. It
may be easier to just buy one from the store for you know, maybe the same price.
Or maybe you don't save much that much money at all. But you'd save a lot of
time. So that's why today a lot of pies are actually ... more are store-bought than
homemade. Let's continue. The use of the word pie simply meaning pleasant can
be found in Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. "
Remember Mark Twain, one of the most famous you know,
former American novelists. Here is the quote. "You're as polite as pie to them. "
Yeah. I did read this when I was ... I think I'm when I was in high school. I had to
read this. Sometimes you did come across these
lines and you think. Polite as pie. Why are you as polite as pie ? Is
pie polite ? But obviously they meant you know, probably the idea of enjoying
eating pie. Pleasant in that sort of sense. All right. Let's continue. In the
1800's the word pie was also used refer to something being an easy match
or contest. Okay. Here is a quote from "The US sporting Life " in May 1886 "As for
stealing second and third it is like eating pie." So this is a reference to
baseball. Of course in baseball you can steal bases. So maybe this was a very
fast runner and for him maybe stealing second and stealing third he thought of
it as being very easy. So it was easy as pie for him. Okay. Good. Let's continue . Now
of course though this ... through this use one can see how the phrase as easy
as pie came about. Which may also be connected to the idiom, that something is
a piece of cake. It also comes from the same sort of idea. Which also means to be easy.
We have a lot of ways in English to say something is easy. Okay.
Now we just have a couple of examples here. Don't worry I'll have it done by
tomorrow. It is as easy as pie for me. So no problem. I'll do it. I'll get to it.
It'll be done by tomorrow. It's not a hard thing for me to do. It's as easy as
pie. Or the second one here. I thought this was going to be difficult, but it
turned out to be as easy as pie. It turned out to be very easy, very simple. Okay.
Anyway I hope you got it. I hope you enjoyed it and if you do like are these
adjective phrases because not everybody covers like adjective phrases and I
usually try to include the idea of you know the origin where it comes though
comes from or how it formed how it got into the English language. Make sure to
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