easily

From Middle English esiliche, equivalent to easy +‎ -ly.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈiːzɪli/
• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ˈiː.zə.liː/, /ˈiː.zɪ.liː/

• Audio (US)

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easily (comparative easilier or more easily, superlative easiliest or most easily)

1. Comfortably, without discomfort or anxiety.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Qveene. […], London: Printed [by John Wolfe] for VVilliam Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938, book II, canto XI:

     Eftsoones she causd him vp to be conuayd, / And of his armes despoyled easily […]

2. Without difficulty.

   Individuals without a family network are easily controlled.

   • 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, OCLC 639762314, page 0147:

     Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations. It is easily earned repetition to state that Josephine St. Auban's was a presence not to be concealed.

   • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 3, in The Mirror and the Lamp:

     One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.”  He at once secured attention by his informal method, and when presently the coughing of Jarvis […] interrupted the sermon, he altogether captivated his audience with a remark about cough lozenges being cheap and easily procurable.

3. (colloquial, not comparable) Absolutely, without question.

   This is easily the best meal I have eaten.

• Yalies

easily

1. Alternative form of esiliche

• “esili (adv.)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 6 August 2018.