Plain Sailing

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Meaning:

Plain Sailing means to be an untroubled task or easy. it is a nautical term that means the sailing is easy and uncomplicated.

Origin:

This phrase started out many years ago when the majority of people thought the earth was flat, and not round. The term was used a “Plane Sailing,” to represent the ocean being flat, so a route from one place to another did not take in the curvature of the planet, instead, it was a flat plane ocean. Now we spell it “Plain” in the sense of ordinary and uncomplicated. This way of writing shows that a task will be easy or uncomplicated.

The first written record of this phrase uses the term plain as in ordinary and was in 1683 by Adam Martindale in A Collection of Letters for Improvement of Husbandry & Trade. It read:

“A token for ship boys, plain-sailing made more plain and short than usually, in three particular methods.”

Example:

Today we still use plain sailing or Clear sailing the same way to describe any straightforward and trouble-free activity. An example sentence is:

“The roads were busy as we drove out of town, but after that, it was plain sailing.”

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