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"March 17, 2020",
"March 23, 2020",
"March 25, 2020",
"April 6, 2002",
"No. 1 Piece of Cake"
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"No. 1 Piece of Cake",
"showlink":
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"showname":
"A Piece of Cake",
"showcomment":
"A Piece of Cake: something easy.",
"showvocab":
"A piece of cake
something that is easy, requires little effort or is easy to accomplish.
Other idioms with a similar meaning
a cake walk
easy as pie
to be a cinch
to be a breeze
to be a snap
to be easy as ABC
to be able to do (something) blindfolded.
To be able to do (something) with your eyes shut.
How do we say it in Spanish?
ser pan comido
ser coser y cantar
estar chupado",
"showquestion":[
"1. Mike doesn’t have a driving license.",
"2. Mike thinks that learning a language is not really that difficult.",
"3. Slavery in the United States ended in the 1970s.",
"4. Mike likes chocolate cake.",
"5. It’s not known exactly if the idiom comes from America or Britain.",
"6. The first officially documented used of ‘a piece of cake’ was in 1936."
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"showtrans":
"Hi, Mike here at Rhythm English,
Welcome to the first installment of the idiom show, where in each installment we will focus on an English idiom, its meaning, and its origin.
For our first idiom we’ll talk about food, desert to be exact, ‘a piece of cake’. The idiom ‘a piece of cake’ is used to describe a situation that is easy, requires little effort, or something accomplished easily.
For example, driving in the city can be difficult, but out in the country where there’s no traffic, it’s a piece of cake. What I’m saying here is that driving in rural areas us much easier than driving in the city.
I like to drive so please allow me to give you another driving example. Some people find driving a manual shift car hard, but driving an automatic is a piece of cake. What I mean here is that if we have one of those cars where you have to change gears, well that can be difficult to drive, but an automatic shift car is quite easy.
If you’re listening to this program then you know how to use the internet. At first using the internet can be difficult but after a while it’s a piece of cake, right? Here I mean that after you use the internet for a while it becomes something normal and easy for you.
Do you think learning a language is a piece of cake? I sure don’t, but have you ever noticed how it seems like a piece of cake for very young children? Here I mean that very young children seem to be able to learn languages easily.
So, how did ‘a piece of cake’ come to mean ‘something easy’.
Well, there are different theories.The most common is that it started in the 19th century in the southern United States, in the 1870s to be exact. In those days cakes were given out as prizes for winning competitions. The idiom refers to competitions where slaves would circle around a cake at a gathering. The most graceful pair would win the cake in the middle. The term ‘cake walk’, which means the same thing as ‘a piece of cake’, also said to come from this origin.
Maybe that theory is true, but there is one problem with it, by the 1870s slavery had technically been abolished in the United States, and some are skeptical that slave owners would have ever shared their cakes with their slaves.
Some say the term came to be simply due to that fact that cake is quite easy to eat, right? I mean who doesn’t like cake? How about a nice yellow cake with chocolate frosting, goes down easy, doesn’t it? This theory makes more sense to me, because we also say ‘easy as pie’ to mean the same thing.
Some say the idiom originated in Britain in the 1930s. The claim is that the Royal Air Force began to use it to mean, ‘an easy mission’, makes sense too.
Well, whatever the reason, this idiom is here to stay. The first time that this idiom appeared in the press was in 1936 when American poet and humorist Ogden Nash wrote, ‘Her picture’s in the paper now, and life’s a piece of cake.’
Thanks for listening to this first installment of the idiom show, we hope you’ll join us again.
Goodbye for now."
}
}