Is "a piece of cake" used in the right context?

Yes that’s an odd use of it. I usually use it for something that’s very easy to do.

@Adirondackwannabe That’s how I use it too. And I have a strange feeling about the “difficult hobby” too.

Mountain climbing can be pretty difficult. You need to know what you’re doing. For example, ten hikers have gone into the Adirondacks and never been found. And these are small mountains.

Piece of cake means that something is easy and simple to do. I just beat the crap out of a bear with my fists, piece of cake!
So it is a bit odd in this thing you posted. It’s not clear in the text whether collecting dolls is easy or tough, the statement seems out of place, sort of uncalled for. Whether the dude is being sarcastic or serious doesn’t matter, what matters is that I can’t really tell why he adds that at the end.

Is John trying to compare the two hobbies? If yes, then he might say: “You like collecting dolls? That’s a piece of cake.”

Still it is a bit strange. Usually we use it in positive context. “Can you help me shovel my driveway?” “Sure! It’s a piece of cake with my new snowblower.”
I would also change the last sentence.
“I like climbing mountains.” or
“I like mountain climbing.”

Are you writing a book in a language that’s not native to you? That’s no piece of cake.

I know @Adirondackwannabe. It’s just I have never heard anyone say “difficult hobby”.

@CWOTUS That’s not what I wrote, and the book is some kind of a bilingual book that tries to teach children English. And English isn’t the writers’ native language for sure.

Maybe a challenging hobby would be a better way to say it. I don’t know, I suck at English. Even though it’s all I’ve got.

@Symbeline well the whole conversation is about two kids discussing their hobbies. John comes into Mary’s room and admires her collection of dolls. She says collecting dolls is her hobby and then comes that idiom. It took me aback the moment I saw it.

No one would ever say the thing you posted. The idiom makes no sense in that context.

I would never use it, or even consider using it, in that context. A “piece of cake” means it’s easy to do.

The idiom is misused in the example that you gave. One definition is “something easily achieved.”

I say that whenever the wife bakes a pie, “it’s a piece of cake…no really, it’s a piece of cake”

Actually, “It’s a piece of cake,” is used to tell someone who thinks something is hard, that it isn’t. It’s not used to describe something that the whole world can see is simple. Collecting dolls IS easy, so saying “It’s a piece of cake” is redundant.

Language and idioms do evolve – and with particular rapidity in English, even more so, I think, in American English. For example, “piece of cake” is frequently of a piece with “cakewalk”, which is roughly synonymous for “easy”, and either or both of those expressions has been shortened to “cake”, as in “That’s cake”, meaning the same thing.

For someone writing a book to teach ESL students it is far more important, I think, to teach “Standard English, straight up” (even discounting that adjectival phrase) because idiomatic speech changes so rapidly as to not only lose its meaning – bad enough! – but in some cases to mean the opposite of its original intent. And then it’s necessary to find out “when was this expression written into the book?” to know what the author’s intent was. (And in the meantime the students are “learning” old and outdated idioms that will make it hard for them to be understood in the new language, and they won’t understand new idioms, either.)

Even clearly defined English words can take on meanings that are opposite from their prior meaning. However, that seems to happen more or less glacially, whereas idioms can change “on a dime”. The writer would better serve his audience by sticking to the clear meanings of everyday words or idioms that have already stood the test of time. “Piece of cake” isn’t quite there, I think. (And he’s using it incorrectly, anyway.)

If the writer doesn’t agree, perhaps he should listen to rap music from the 90s before we continue the argument.

I don’t think this has anything to do with whether the meanings of idioms change over time; I think the publisher simply hired someone whose knowledge of English was poor. This happens frequently with intro-level language materials. I remember being taught sixth-grade English in a French school, and finding loads of errors in their grammar book. It was terrible.

@CWOTUS But cakewalk has a racist connotation. Black people have told me that it is offensive.

Though a bit odd, if I follow the context I would not say it was wrong. If John used the phrase to describe the ease he felt mountain climbing was, it would have been better used. If he was depicting how easy doll collecting is, I would say ”easy as falling off a log” to be better.

@marinelife But cakewalk has a racist connotation. Black people have told me that it is offensive.
Really? Shut the front door…….I never heard of that. (and I am qualified to be offended , but I am not).

@marinelife “Cakewalk” does have a racist connotation, and for that reason a lot of people avoid using it. But… “piece of cake” has the same origin. I don’t think that is as widely known, although it seems a little obvious after hearing the story.

@marinelife I learned something new today. It was a dance held on the plantations by the slaves.

In my opinion, the idea that the term “cakewalk” or “piece of cake” is racist, is ridiculous. Does the mere mention of the fact that the slaves came up with it make it racist? Is it the mere mention of slaves? If anything, it’s more racist toward the white people (although I shall chose not to view it that way) because its origins involved mocking their white “owners.”
Where the hell is @Blackberry when you need him! I shall go get him.

@Dutchess_III It was a quite learned black woman who told me of the context and that it was offensive to blacks, which, like @Hypocrisy_Central, I had not heard before. I think that just having some people offended is enough not to use the term when there are others that you can use.

But what is offensive about it @marinelife?

I guess my own take on this is that unless a word or phrase “directly and obviously” offends (unless my intent is to offend – rarely, but not unheard of), then I will use it without reservation (a word that is bound to offend some Native Americans and Japanese-Americans). We all speak English here (which is bound to offend the Irish, if no one else), we all use Latin expressions (which must certainly offend anyone the Romans conquered / oppressed during their reign), we count with Arabic numerals (which, oddly, does not seem to offend most Europeans), etc. (Oops, I did it again. And that expression offends people who don’t like silly blonde pop singers. And referring to Britney as a silly blonde will offend a lot of women, as well as referring to her as a singer will undoubtedly offend Kanye West and other “serious” artists. And so on.)

Well, fuck that, I say. (Despite the fact that I have used a triggering expression.) I don’t have time to look out for everyone’s potential and usually false “offense”. What a royal pain that is. With apologies to all of my fellow serfs.

That takes the cake.

But thank you for the education. I always appreciate that, and I am not offended to learn that I frequently use “offensive” terminology.

In fact, if you ever told your children nursery rhymes, you ran the risk of offending anyone whose ancestors lived through the Middle Ages in Europe, since most nursery rhymes and “Mother Goose” stories have origins in the most hideous rituals of torture, illness and other forms of hideous death from those times.

I would avoid using the word “cakewalk” to mean “something easy”, because a cakewalk is part of Jim Crow iconography. It’s similar to making casual reference to Sambo or lawn jockeys or minstrel shows in everyday conversation. We don’t do that, for a good reason.

It’s hard to think of the phrase “piece of cake” the same way, because until today, I would never have made that connection, but I find that discovering it’s origin changes how I think of it. So, I would guess that it will fall out of my vocabulary, much as the word “gypped” has. I don’t feel that such changes are some kind of burden on me. Rather, I think I’ve learned something new, and it changes how I perceive the phrase.

@CWOTUS So true. I was appalled at the origin of Ring Around the Rosie.

It was crazy, wasn’t it. Leave it to kids to make a game out of something so horrific.

In the past people I know and friends have used cakewalk and no one got huffy.

Thanks everyone. Actually I am doing research into a new series of English textbooks for junior school children (it’s a school project). Now I really don’t know what to say…

@Mimishu1995 We talked about the mountain climbing. It’s tougher when the climbers aren’t too bright. Some woman started up Mt Marcy, which is the highest peak in NY with her two children, ages 7 and 11. At 4:00 PM. Guess who spent the night on the mountain in subzero F temps? They’re all hospitalized with weather related injuries. That climb isn’t any piece of cake.

@CWOTUS The Cakewalk is a joyous thing; a proud, happy man will cakewalk into town. It comes from the dances at 19th century Black American weddings as performed by the celebrants. It’s no more racist for a non-POC to use than “jumping the broom.” Since when does one subculture not borrow from another? And since when does one subculture dictate the speech of another? Anybody who considers this racist, is just begging for negative attention, looking for trouble that isn’t there, hoping for a rally.

I say let them eat cake.

Thank you @Espiritus_Corvus. That’s exactly what I was trying to convey.

It means that something was very easy and done with little or no effort same as a walk in the park.

Um, we got that @Safie. It’s also apparently racist, so that’s what we’ve been talking about.

@ Dutchess, yes i see but giving my answer anyways.

I had no idea cakewalk and piece of cake had racist connotations so I learned something new as well.

I do think it’s not a big deal, not to mention I’m dealing with my own problems and never cared for this kind of stuff lol.

You can tell when someone uses a term with the intention to harm, and I’ve never heard of someone using these terms to harm. It can happen but….whatever I’m hungry and tired.

@Blackberry There are no negative connotations to either phrase.

YOU’RE A PIECE OF CAKE @Blackberry! THAT’S ALL YOU ARE!
Now to leave them wondering what the hell @Blackberry did! :D

OK, for the sake of argument I WILL be offended by cakewalk, just because I am expected to ~~~

I use it as you being a “Piece of Cake” as being you really are something else! You think your something that you’re NOT! I was taught that as a Southern girl and it’s always stuck with me! So I guess you can blame it on my southern heritage!

“A piece of cake” just means something is easy.