child's play

From child +‎ -’s +‎ play, originally referring literally to play by a child.^[1]

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃaɪldz ˌpleɪ/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

child's play (uncountable)

1. (idiomatic) Something particularly easy or simple.

   Synonyms: kid stuff, piece of cake

   Compared to my last job, this is child’s play.

   • 1839 (indicated as 1840), Thomas Carlyle, “Laissez-Faire”, in Chartism, London: James Fraser, , →OCLC, pages 52–53:

     The brawny craftsman finds it no child's play to mould his unpliant rugged masses; neither is guidance of men a dilettantism: what it becomes when treated as a dilettantism, we may see!

   • 1849, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter III, in The History of England from the Accession of James II, volume I, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC, page 322:

     In every county there were elderly gentlemen who had seen service which was no child's play.

   • 1914, Robert Frost, “A Servant to Servants”, in North of Boston, London: David Nutt , →OCLC, page 74:

     He'd pull his bars apart like bow and bow-string, / And let them go and make them twang until / His hands had worn them smooth as any ox-bow. / And then he'd crow as if he thought that child's play— / The only fun he had.

   • 1949 January–February, F. G. Roe, “I Saw Three Englands–1”, in The Railway Magazine, London: Tothill Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 11:

     I knew something of the railway engineer's uncanny genius for finding a path through such barriers if any path existed; yet I also knew the path would be no child's play.

• easy as pie
• like taking candy from a baby
• Thesaurus:easy

• Child's Play (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia