"make light work of" meaning in English

See make light work of in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: En-au-make light work of.ogg [Australia] Forms: makes light work of [present, singular, third-person], making light work of [participle, present], made light work of [participle, past], made light work of [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|make<,,made> light work of}} make light work of (third-person singular simple present makes light work of, present participle making light work of, simple past and past participle made light work of)
  1. (idiomatic) To manage something without difficulty. Tags: idiomatic Related terms: make quick work of, many hands make light work
    Sense id: en-make_light_work_of-en-verb-Y3ES7T45 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for make light work of meaning in English (1.7kB)

{
  "antonyms": [
    {
      "word": "make heavy weather"
    }
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "makes light work of",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "making light work of",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "made light work of",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "made light work of",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "make<,,made> light work of"
      },
      "expansion": "make light work of (third-person singular simple present makes light work of, present participle making light work of, simple past and past participle made light work of)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2013 October 15, Daniel Taylor, The Guardian",
          "text": "Rooney's goal certainly came at a good time as the news filtered through that Ukraine were making light work of San Marino.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To manage something without difficulty."
      ],
      "id": "en-make_light_work_of-en-verb-Y3ES7T45",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To manage something without difficulty."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "make quick work of"
        },
        {
          "word": "many hands make light work"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-make light work of.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/a/ae/En-au-make_light_work_of.ogg/En-au-make_light_work_of.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/En-au-make_light_work_of.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "make light work of"
}
{
  "antonyms": [
    {
      "word": "make heavy weather"
    }
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "makes light work of",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "making light work of",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "made light work of",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "made light work of",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "make<,,made> light work of"
      },
      "expansion": "make light work of (third-person singular simple present makes light work of, present participle making light work of, simple past and past participle made light work of)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "make quick work of"
    },
    {
      "word": "many hands make light work"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2013 October 15, Daniel Taylor, The Guardian",
          "text": "Rooney's goal certainly came at a good time as the news filtered through that Ukraine were making light work of San Marino.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To manage something without difficulty."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To manage something without difficulty."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-make light work of.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/a/ae/En-au-make_light_work_of.ogg/En-au-make_light_work_of.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/En-au-make_light_work_of.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "make light work of"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.