breeze
noun

- something easily done

- something that is easy to achieve, often unexpectedly

- a light and pleasant wind

Merriam-Webster / Cambridge Dictiionary

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WORD ORIGIN

The earliest known use of the word "breeze" in English is from the 1560s, initially referring to a "moderate north or northeast wind."

The sense of a "gentle or light wind" emerged later in the 1620s.

The meaning "something easy" is an American English usage from around 1928.

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NOT ALWAYS “A BREEZE”!

Unintended consequences of “easy” solutions:

- The “Stranger Danger” campaign inadvertently made children less safe by teaching them not to talk to any strangers, even in emergency situations where they may need help from an adult. This had the unintended consequence of making children more vulnerable by discouraging them from seeking assistance.

- The lengthy approval processes for new drugs, intended to ensure safety, has likely caused more deaths by delaying life-saving treatments from reaching the market. The rigorous testing ironically costs human lives it aims to protect.

- Increasing cigarette taxes to discourage smoking often backfires by creating a lucrative black market, which decreases government tax revenues rather than increasing them as intended. The higher prices incentivise tax evasion, undermining the policy goal.

Sometimes seemingly straightforward solutions can have complex, counterintuitive consequences that are difficult to anticipate ... and which produce the opposite of the intended effect.

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SYNONYMS

BREEZE, cakewalk, child's play, cinch, cincher, doddle, duck soup, easy as abc (as falling off a log, as pie), easy-peasy solutions, effortless, piece of cake, pushover, romp, saunter, snap, walkover

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation, say something like:

“Ordering food is A BREEZE,… understanding rapid-fire waiter-English is quite another matter!”

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