Easiest thing

Question

From a movie:  Do you think you could bring this back for me?  It's not  the easiest  thing to fly with. Why superlative? Why not simply something like 'It's not easy to fly with this thing'?

Pieanne · Accepted Answer

I'd say it stresses the fact that it's NOT easy. There are quite a lot of easier things to do than that.

Maverick88 · Answer

I think it's also a way to express something politely; for example someone tells you a story and you tell him: 'well, it's not the most interesting story I've ever heard' and the intention may even by that it's the least interesting; but probably you wouldn't say 'it's the most boring story...'.

Pieanne · Answer

Quite right, Maverick!

Paco2004 · Answer

It's a shortened form of the idiomatic phrase "be the easiest thing in the world" (be extremely easy).

Just my two cents.

paco

Taka · Answer

If it were a kind of idiomatic phrase, or 'fixed' phrase, such a nice expansion as marveric88 has made would be impossible.

If there are thousands more of other expansions of this kind of superlative usage, I'd say it's more than an idiom.

Paco2004 · Answer

Taka

Visit [url="http://www.freesearch.co.uk/dictionary/the+easiest+thing+in+the+world"] here[/url]
OED quotes 8 sentences using "the easiest thing" and five of them are followed by "in the world".

paco

MrPedantic · Answer

Hello Taka

If the task were the 'easiest thing (in the world to do)', it would be no trouble to perform.

In this instance, it's not the easiest thing (in the world to do), i.e. it will cause some trouble.

So it's an understatement: the implication is, 'there's no way this particular task could be mistaken for the easiest thing (in the world to do)'.

MrP

Taka · Answer

I buy the idea of understatement. That seems plausible. Thank you.

If you like a dictionary-kind of definition, paco, idioms are those which 'cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements', according to the American Heritage; I have no trouble understandeing 'the easiest thing in the world' without using a dictionary.

Taka · Answer

MrP.

So if it's an understatement, could I use any 'not the -est' as an understatement, as marveric88 says?

MrPedantic · Answer

Hello Taka

['to be' + 'not' + superlative + noun + 'in the world]

The flavour of 'humour' in this phrase is difficult to express. The implication is that the speaker is taking a distant, seemingly detached, rather lordly view of whatever-it-was; he doesn't want to be seen to make a fuss about it.

I can't think of a non-understating example; but the implication of that understatement would depend on the meaning of the adjective:

1. 'It wasn't the hardest thing in the world.'
— i.e. 'it was very easy'. (A 'humble' version would be 'it wasn't too difficult').

2. 'It wasn't the easiest thing in the world.'
— i.e. 'it was rather hard'. The speaker is confessing to difficulty; but the understatement emphasises in a modest way that he has overcome that difficulty.

3. 'Well, let's just say it wasn't the most interesting book I've ever read.'
— i.e. 'frankly, it was very dull'. The speaker wants to appear to be avoiding forthright condemnation, which might be tactless: perhaps the other person likes the book, for instance. So there is room for manoeuvre, if the conversation takes this embarrassing turn:

'Oh, really? I quite liked it, myself.'
'Oh well, I don't say it wasn't interesting in places...Maybe it's just me. I suppose it isn't really the kind of book that interests me...But I can see that other people might like it, of course...'

Whereas if he had said 'frankly, it was very dull' at first, he would have found it difficult to qualify his statement and back-pedal.

(But this probably belongs to the history of understatement, rather than the phrase itself.)

4. 'He isn't the easiest person in the world to get along with.'
— i.e. he is intolerable.

6. 'He isn't the rudest man in the world.'
— i.e. 'but he's almost the rudest man in the world'.

MrP

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