{{Short description|Idiom}} {{wiktionary|easy as peach pie}} "'''As easy as pie'''" is a popular colloquial idiom and simile which is used to describe a task or experience as pleasurable and simple.<ref name="Almond1995">{{cite book|last=Almond|first=Jordan|title=Dictionary of word origins: a history of the words, expressions, and clichés we use|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Hq5Rog6KBqQC&pg=PA87|accessdate=29 November 2010|date=1995-01-01|publisher=Citadel Press|isbn=978-0-8065-1713-1|page=87}}</ref><ref name="bd1">{{cite book|title=Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable|url=http://credoreference.com/entry/brewerphrase/as#s000436b|year=2009|publisher=Chambers Harrap Publishers|location=London, United Kingdom|pages=sec. As}}</ref> The phrase is often interchanged with piece of cake, which shares the same connotation.<ref name="bd1"/>
==Origin== The phrase was used in 1910 by Zane Grey in "The Young Forester" and in the ''Saturday Evening Post'' of 22 February 1913. It may have been a development of the phrase ''like eating pie'', first recorded in ''Sporting Life'' in 1886. In 1855, the phrase, in a slight variation was published in a book called ''Which? Right or Left?'' Here it was used as ''nice as a pie''.<ref name="origin">{{cite web |last1=Dictionary |first1=The Idioms |title=As easy as pie phrase origin |url=https://www.theidioms.com/as-easy-as-pie/ |publisher=Theidioms.com |accessdate=28 July 2018}}</ref> Alternatively, since in pre-reformation England the collection of liturgical rules for all 35 various days when Easter could fall was called Pie, ''easy as pie'' may ironically refer to overly complicated rubrics.<ref>''The Oxford English Dictionary'', 193.3</ref>
There are some claims that its use in New Zealand in the 1920s was influenced by the similar expressions ''pie at'' or ''pie on'' from the Maori term ''pai'' 'good'.
==References== {{Reflist}}
==Further reading== * {{cite book|last=Flexner|first=Stuart Berg|title=I hear America talking: an illustrated history of American words and phrases|url=https://archive.org/details/ihearamericatalk0000flex_b4d4|url-access=registration|accessdate=29 November 2010|date=1979-10-01|publisher=Simon and Schuster|isbn=978-0-671-24994-6|page=[https://archive.org/details/ihearamericatalk0000flex_b4d4/page/69 69]}}
==External links== * [http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/as-easy-as-pie.html As easy as pie] * [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/piece_of_cake "piece of cake" in Wiktionary]
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