Easy

How to spell easy

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce easy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does easy mean?

1. adjectiveAchieved or done without great effort or difficulty.
2. adverbIn a relaxed or unhurried manner, without strain.

Easy in a sentence

• adjective

  The recipe was so easy that she finished it in ten minutes.

• adverb

  The coach told the players to take it easy after the long match.

• adjective

  The new software made the monthly accounts much more easy to manage.

• adverb

  He likes to go easy on his first day back from holiday.

Where does easy come from?

Language of origin: French

Easy reaches English from the Old French aisié, meaning 'comfortable' or 'at ease', the past participle of aisier 'to put at ease'. That word was built on the noun aise, meaning 'comfort' or 'opportunity', whose ultimate origin is genuinely uncertain; one common suggestion traces it to the Latin adiacens 'lying nearby', the same root that gives us 'adjacent', on the idea of having things conveniently to hand. English adopted the word in the 1100s and 1200s, first in the sense of being free from pain or trouble, and only later extended it to tasks that require little effort. The related noun 'ease' survives alongside it and shares the same source. Because the spelling preserves the soft French 's' sound rather than a 'z', the word is one of the few where 's' between vowels still reads as a 'z' to the ear, a small reminder of its French route into English.

How the word is built

• eas- (from Old French aise: comfort, ease)
• -y (adjective suffix)