A piece of cake

Question

Hi Teachers

I'm trying to find the origin of the cliché "a piece of cake" but it seems not to be a task as easy as pie.

Clichés and Expressions Origins says;
Cake walk, piece of cake/takes the cake - easy task/wins (the prize) - from the tradition of giving cakes as prizes in rural competitions. Brewer (1870) tells of the tradition in USA slavery states when slaves or free descendents would walk in a procession in pairs around a cake at a social gathering or party, the most graceful pair being awarded the cake as a prize. This also gave us the expression 'cake walk' and 'a piece of cake' both meaning a job or contest that's very easy to achieve or win, and the variation 'takes the biscuit', meaning to win (often ironically, to be the worst).
http://www.businessballs.com/clichesorigins.htm

However, Dictionary.com says;
The expression "a piece of cake" originated in the Royal Air Force in the late 1930s for an easy mission, and the precise reference is as mysterious as that of the simile "easy as pie". Possibly it evokes the easy accomplishment of swallowing a slice of sweet dessert.

And the earliest usage quoted in the OED (which tells nothing about the origin) is;
"Her picture is now in the papers, and life is a cake of piece" (Primrose Path by O. Nash 1936).

Could you give me any information or opinions about the origin?

paco

MrPedantic · Accepted Answer

Her picture is now in the papers, and life is a cake of piece

Is that exactly how it appears in the OED, Paco?

Paco2004 · Answer

Hi MrP san

The full quotation of the OED is as follows.

c. colloquial phrase
a piece of cake: something easy or pleasant.

1936 O. Nash Primrose Path 172 Her picture's in the papers now, And life's a piece of cake. 1942 T. Rattigan Flare Path 1, Special. Very hush-hush. Not exactly a piece of cake, I believe. 1943 P. Brennan et al. Spitfires over Malta i. 31 The mass raids promised to be a piece of cake, and we anticipated taking heavy toll of the raiders. 1960 T. McLean Kings of Rugby 205 They took the field against Canterbury as if the match were ‘a piece of cake’

paco

MrPedantic · Answer

Thank you!

I don't seem to have a copy of this poem anywhere, so can't be entirely sure of the context; but it seems astonishing that a phrase should be able to permeate British aviatory culture within 6 years of its appearance in a book of American light verse.

Also, 'piece of cake' in the poem has a very general sense, as in 'life's a bowl of cherries', 'life's a bed of roses', etc. It seems odd that it should have mutated so quickly into a specific term (i.e. for particular tasks).

It isn't (as far as I can see) in Brewer, though; and I'm sure he would have noticed it if it had been extant then.

You ask some good questions, Paco san!

MrP

MrPedantic · Answer

PS:

The 'businessballs' website implies that Brewer links 'piece of cake' to 'cakewalk', but in fact he doesn't mention the phrase. On the contrary, his explanation of 'cakewalk' suggests that it's by no means a 'piece of cake'.

Paco2004 · Answer

Hello Mr P.

Thank you for your message. It's my first time I've heard the name of Ogden Nash. Is he such a famous poet as everybody knows him? By the way I found another website that told the origin of "a piece of cake".

From [url="http://www.takeourword.com/Issue089.html"]Eugene C. Cook;[/url]

[Q]The phrase "a piece of cake" is used in one of the Paine Webber commercials [in the U.S.], and often heard in conversations on TV programs. Do you know where it originated?

[A]Well, we know that it first appeared in the written record in 1936, in Ogden Nash's Primrose Path: "Her picture’s in the papers now, And life’s a piece of cake." Thereafter it was quickly adopted in Britain and used especially by the RAF.

It's thought to derive from cakewalk, which originally referred to a promenade contest of the late 19th century in America, especially among blacks. The couple displaying the best walk won a cake as a prize. The word came to refer soon thereafter to a kind of dance, and then it was used more figuratively to refer to anything that was stylish yet easy to do. By Ogden Nash's time it had been transformed to a piece of cake, though cakewalk survived with the same meaning. Both terms, in fact, were used by the RAF during World War II.

It sounds true the phrase "cakewalk" is synonymous to "a pie of cake". I searched for "cakewalk" in the OED and got the description as follows;

CAKE-WALK
figurative use. in quotations of 1916 and 1966 = 'something easy'.
1863 H. Edgar Jrnl. in Montana Hist. Soc. Contrib. (1900) III. 133 Around and around that bush we went.... . We had a good laugh over our cake walk. 1894 ‘M. Twain’ in Critic 7 July 8/1 This Shelley biography .... is a literary cake-walk. 1916 J. B. Cooper Coo-oo-ee xi. 153 Whether they would give him victory in a fight that would not be a cake-walk, he did not know. 1966 J. M. Brett Cargo of Spent Evil x. 87 This should be a cakewalk for you.

paco

CalifJim · Answer

... Ogden Nash. Is he such a famous poet as everybody knows him?

Just about everybody, I imagine.

"I've never seen a purple cow" is one of the most famous of his verses.

CJ

MrPedantic · Answer

Thanks for that, Paco san.

The Twain quotation seems to use 'cake-walk' as a metaphor in its original sense, whereas the Cooper quotation has the sense of 'something easy'. So that knocks my previous objection on the head.

But how to step from 'cake-walk' to 'piece of cake'?

Buried somewhere in the pap produced between 1916 and 1936 is the missing link...

MrP

MrPedantic · Answer

Hello again Paco

There is an equivalent French phrase: c'est du gâteau (cf c'est de la tarte).

I don't know whether it predates the English/American usage, or whether it's simply a translation, or whether Nash knew of it.

Someone with a French etymological dictionary could perhaps help.

MrP

Paco2004 · Answer

MrP

Thank you for the information. It is really interesting. I don't know much about French language and Nash, but I feel it quite possible Nash knew the French phrase "c'est du gâteau" and translated it into "it's a piece of cake." America then was a country of immigrants and so probably many foreign idiomatic phrases came with them. This would be a reason why it is hard to search for real origins of some idioms born in America.

paco

Anonymous · Answer

It is originated from the small villages of england as there cakes were easily available.<img class='emoticon' style='Width:19px;Height:19px;' data-delaysrc='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/44.gif' src='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/44.gif' alt='Emotion: cake'/>

A piece of cake

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