child's play

Idioms & Phrases

child's play

Something easily done, a trivial matter. For example, Finding the answer was child's play for Robert, or The fight we had was child's play compared to the one I had with my mother! Originating in the early 1300s as child's game, the idiom was already used in its present form by Chaucer in The Merchant's Tale: "It is no child's play to take a wife."

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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