Piece of Cake

Dreaming of Vacation

It is hard to get a couple weeks off in a row at my job. When they handed out the calendar this year, I circled three weeks in July. It was a rare three weeks in a row. It was way more difficult than it needed to be, but they promised I could take that time off. They won’t let me book the time off until closer to the day and that makes me worried. Anyways, yesterday I was asked to do a special lecture during that time. Normally, I would just say, “no” but is just showing visitors the new facilities. I designed half of the facilities, so it makes sense for me to do it. But, I also didn’t want to give up my two-week vacation dream. Eventually, my coworker used the secret words, “it will be a piece of cake” and I agreed to do it.

I still have a few phrases left to cover before teacher training starts. I haven’t had any stories related to the phrases, so I haven’t written about them yet. A piece of cake should have been an easy phrase to cover, but there isn’t a story that stands out. So, when my coworker used the phrase today, I knew it was a sign.

Meaning

A piece of cake means that something is very easy. It is a strange phrase because baking cakes is difficult. However, a piece of cake means easy. It is often used in reference to a job or task.

Example: Taking the dog for a walk is a piece of cake.

Origin

The exact origin of this phrase is not clear. The first occurrence of piece of cake came in 1936 by Ogden Nash in Primrose Path, “Her picture’s in the papers now, And life’s a piece of cake.” A few dictionaries claim that it was in use by the Royal Air Force in the 1930s in reference to an easy mission. However, the connection between easy and cake was not well established.

It's a cakewalk

Most sources agree that a piece of cake shares its origins with cakewalk. A cakewalk was a type of fancy walking (almost a dance). The cakewalks were performed by slaves for the amusement of their masters. In an act of defiance, the dances were based on their owners’ mannerisms (embellished). The winners of the cakewalk were given a cake as a prize. It is also the source of another idiom, take the cake. The challenge of a cakewalk is to make it look easy. If it was too difficult, it is not a cakewalk. This might be how cake and easy became connected. The word, cakewalk, can be traced back to the 1870s but the idea is older. It was a pre-civil war dance competition, meaning cakewalks were performed before the 1860s. After the civil war, cakewalks were still performed in minstrel shows. These were performances where white people would wear black makeup and act like a caricature of their black counterparts. They were so popular that in 1897, the national cakewalk championship was held in Madison Square Garden. In 1889 there was a performance at the Paris World’s Fair.

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Resources:

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/431679/the-conflicting-origin-of-a-piece-of-cake
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/12/23/256566647/the-extraordinary-story-of-why-a-cakewalk-wasnt-always-easy
https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/who-takes-cake-history-cakewalk.