/un ˈdʒɔko da raˈɡattsi/ lit. ‘a game for kids’
Italian idiom, everyday. Something is very easy to do.
Draft Not yet checked by a native Italian speaker.
How do people use Un gioco da ragazzi
?
Everyday Italian, fine in any company. It usually follows “essere”: “è un gioco da ragazzi”, “era un gioco da ragazzi”, and it’s often turned round in the negative to admit something was hard: “non è stato un gioco da ragazzi”.
Also said un gioco da bambini
Un gioco da ragazzi
in real sentences
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È un gioco da ragazzi.
It’s a piece of cake.
Tatoeba, sentence by Guybrush88, translation by Eldad, CC BY 2.0 FR
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Scalare quella montagna era un gioco da ragazzi.
Climbing that mountain was a piece of cake.
Tatoeba, sentence by Guybrush88, translation by CM, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Un gioco da ragazzi
come from?
English Wiktionary glosses it as “game for (young) boys” and quotes Lucio Corsi’s 2025 song “Volevo essere un duro”: “Vivere la vita è un gioco da ragazzi”. The idea matches English “child’s play”: a task so simple a child could do it. No date for its first use is recorded.
Mistakes learners make with Un gioco da ragazzi
Reading “ragazzi” as teenagers or “guys” and translating it as “a game for the boys”. Here it means children, so the sense is child’s play, the same as the variant “gioco da bambini”.
Other Italian idioms like Un gioco da ragazzi
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