Adjective: easy
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
| Comparative | easier |
| Superlative | easiest |
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more easy |
| Superlative | most easy |
Sample Sentences
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Now that I know it's taken care of, I can rest easy at night.
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“[…] 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.” [1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVI, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:]
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It's often easy to wake up but hard to get up.
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The teacher gave an easy test to her students.
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Now the easiest sell in traveldom is made even easier. [1963, American Society of Travel Agents, ASTA Travel News, volume 32, page 55:]
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I realized this all too well when as a seminarian I got stuck with the job of recruiting the washees for a Maundy Thursday service. It's much easier to be the one down on the floor with the basin[…] [1995, Margaret Guenther, Toward Holy Ground, page 43:]
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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. [2013 August 10, “A new prescription”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848, archived from the original on 21 Sep 2020:]
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You could just use ordinary shop-bought kecap manis to marinade the meat, but making your own is easy, has a far more elegant fragrance and is, above all, such a great brag! Flavouring kecap manis is an intensely personal thing, so try this version now and next time cook the sauce down with crushed, split lemongrass and a shredded lime leaf. [2015 October 27, Matt Preston, The Simple Secrets to Cooking Everything Better, Plum, →ISBN, page 192:]
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Toyota spokesman Paul Hogard said the automaker wants speedometers to be easy to read, so there’s value in placing the typical operating speed of American cars, 45 mph to 70 mph, he said, at the top of the speedometer, which is the easiest place on the speedometer for the driver to read. [2022 September 10, Matt McFarland, “Why your car’s speedometer goes up to 160 mph (even when your car can’t)”, in CNN Business:]
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President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to make it easier for his administration to deport people to South Sudan and other countries that are not their homeland, the latest in a series of controversial immigration policies the administration has put before the conservative-majority high court. [2025 May 27, John Fritze, Angélica Franganillo Díaz and Devan Cole, “Trump asks Supreme Court to make it easier to deport migrants to South Sudan and other third-party countries”, in CNN:]
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Rich people live in easy circumstances, that is, the easy life.
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an easy chair
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easy manners; an easy style
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the easy vigour of a line [1711 May, [Alexander Pope], An Essay on Criticism, London: […] W[illiam] Lewis […]; and sold by W[illiam] Taylor […], T[homas] Osborn[e] […], and J[ohn] Graves […], →OCLC:]
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She has a reputation for being easy; they say she slept with half the senior class.
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He gain'd their easy hearts. [1697, Virgil, “(please specify the book number)”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:]
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He is[…] too tyrannical to be an easy monarch. [1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC:]
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The market is easy.
Adjectives inflected like easy
snubby,
snithy,
snorty,
snoopy,
sainty,
screwy,
scowly,
schizy,
smacky,
slimsy,
slanty,
slaggy,
songly,
soothy,
shysty,
shiply,
skeezy,
beastly,
yearny,
whip-creamy, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
From Middle English esy, eesy, partly from Middle English ese (“ease”) + -y, equivalent to ease + -y, and partly from Anglo-Norman eisé 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 (“easy”), from Old English īeþe, from Proto-Germanic *auþuz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂éwtus, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ew- (“to enjoy, consume”). Compare also Old Saxon ōþi, Old High German ōdi, Old Norse auðr, auð-, Icelandic auð (adverb), auð-, all meaning "easy." More at ease, eath.
Verbs referencing "easy"
Finnish Adjectives
iisi.