Easier said than done
Suggest a CorrectionMeaning
A proposal or instruction sounds simple but is substantially more difficult to carry out in practice. Commonly used as a response to advice that makes a difficult action sound simple. Regional use: Late Middle English in ancestry; now widespread.
Origin
The contrast between saying and doing is recorded in English by about 1450 in forms equivalent to easier to say than to do. The compressed participial wording familiar today became dominant later. Some popular accounts attach the line to an unspecified Vulgaria; the safer evidence is the dictionary record dating the expression's English ancestry to the mid-fifteenth century. The proverb is not a claim that a task is impossible, only that talk understates its difficulty.
Research Sources
Variants
- More easily said than done
Usage Examples
- Replacing the whole system by Friday is easier said than done.
- Just stay calm, he advised, though that was easier said than done.
- Finding a quiet flat near the station proved easier said than done.