/aɪ̯n ˈkɪndɐˌʃpiːl/ lit. ‘child’s play’
German idiom, everyday. Something is very easy to do.
Draft Not yet checked by a native German speaker.
How do people use Ein Kinderspiel
?
Neutral and very common, from homework to newspaper headlines: “Das ist ein Kinderspiel.” The negative “das ist kein Kinderspiel” is just as frequent and means a job is harder or more serious than it looks.
Also said kein Kinderspiel
Ein Kinderspiel
in real sentences
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Das ist ein Kinderspiel.
That’s child’s play.
Tatoeba, sentence by Sudajaengi, translation by CK, CC BY 2.0 FR
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Der Rätselwettbewerb war ein Kinderspiel.
The quiz competition was a piece of cake.
Tatoeba, sentence by Zaghawa, translation by divijo, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Ein Kinderspiel
come from?
The image explains itself: a task so simple a child could do it while playing. German Wiktionary lists the figurative sense as a straightforward transfer from the literal “game for children”, and English has the same picture in “child’s play”. Nobody has pinned down which language had it first.
Mistakes learners make with Ein Kinderspiel
Using the plural “Kinderspiele” for the idiom: the plural only means actual children’s games, while the “easy” sense is always singular, “ein Kinderspiel”.
Other German idioms like Ein Kinderspiel
Spot a mistake in Ein Kinderspiel
?
Send a correction, or a sentence you’d actually say with it. Everything is read before anything on this page changes.