Open main menu
Wiktionary

easy

Contents

EnglishEdit

Alternative formsEdit

EtymologyEdit

From Middle English eesy, esy, partly from Middle English ese (“ease”) + -y, equivalent to ease +‎ -y, and partly from Old French aisié (“eased, at ease, at leisure”), past participle of aisier (“to put at ease”), from aise (“empty space, elbow room, opportunity”), of uncertain origin. See ease. Merged with Middle English ethe, eathe (“not difficult, easy”), from Old English ēaþe, īeþe (“easy, smooth, not difficult”), from Proto-Germanic *auþuz, from Proto-Indo-European *aut- (“empty, lonely”). Compare also Old Saxon ōþi (“easy, vacant, empty”), Old High German ōdi (“easy, effortless, vacant, empty”), Old Norse auðr (“easy, vacant, empty”). More at ease, eath.

PronunciationEdit

AdjectiveEdit

easy (comparative easier or more easy, superlative easiest or most easy)

  1. (now rare except in certain expressions) Comfortable; at ease.
    • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 16, in The Mirror and the Lamp:
      “[…] She takes the whole thing with desperate seriousness. But the others are all easy and jovial—thinking about the good fare that is soon to be eaten, about the hired fly, about anything.”
    Now that I know it's taken care of, I can rest easy at night.
  2. Requiring little skill or effort.
    It's often easy to wake up but hard to get up.
    • 2013 August 10, “A new prescription”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848:
      As the world's drug habit shows, governments are failing in their quest to monitor every London window-box and Andean hillside for banned plants. But even that Sisyphean task looks easy next to the fight against synthetic drugs. No sooner has a drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one.
    The teacher gave an easy test to her students.
  3. Causing ease; giving comfort, or freedom from care or labour.
    Rich people live in easy circumstances.
    an easy chair
  4. Free from constraint, harshness, or formality; unconstrained; smooth.
    easy manners; an easy style
    • Alexander Pope
      the easy vigour of a line
  5. (informal, derogatory, of a person) Consenting readily to sex.
    He has a reputation for being easy; they say he slept with half the senior class.
  6. Not making resistance or showing unwillingness; tractable; yielding; compliant.
    • Dryden
      He gained their easy hearts.
    • Sir Walter Scott
      He is too tyrannical to be an easy monarch.
  7. (finance, dated) Not straitened as to money matters; opposed to tight.
    The market is easy.

SynonymsEdit

AntonymsEdit

Derived termsEdit

Related termsEdit

TranslationsEdit

comfortable — see comfortable
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked

AdverbEdit

easy (comparative easier, superlative easiest)

  1. In a relaxed or casual manner.
    • 1786, John Jeffries; Jean-Pierre Blanchard, A narrative of the two aerial Voyages of Dr. J. with Mons. Blanchard: with meteorological observations and remarks.‎[1], page 45:
      We immediately threw out all the little things we had with us, ſuch as biſcuits, apples, &c. and after that one of our oars or wings; but ſtill deſcending, we caſt away the other wing, and then the governail ; having likewiſe had the precaution, for fear of accidents, while the Balloon was filling, partly to looſen and make it go eaſy, I now ſucceeded in attempting to reach without the Car, and unſcrewing the moulinet, with all its apparatus; I likewiſe caſt that into the ſea.
    After his illness, John decided to take it easy.
  2. In a manner without strictness or harshness.
    Jane went easier on him after he broke his arm.
  3. Used an intensifier for large magnitudes.
    This project will cost 15 million dollars, easy.
  4. Not difficult, not hard. (Can we add an example for this sense?)

Derived termsEdit

NounEdit

easy (plural easies)

  1. Something that is easy

VerbEdit

easy (third-person singular simple present easies, present participle easying, simple past and past participle easied)

  1. (rowing) Synonym of easy-oar

AnagramsEdit

Middle EnglishEdit

AdjectiveEdit

easy

  1. Alternative form of esy

AdverbEdit

easy

  1. Alternative form of esy

ReferencesEdit

Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=easy&oldid=52817766"