on a silver platter

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Meaning · English

Given or presented something easily or with little effort required

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

được đưa ra hoặc trình bày một cách dễ dàng hoặc với ít nỗ lực

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: served on a valuable dish
Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

She was offering herself to him on a silver platter, no strings attached, and she would simply cope with the agony of their parting when the time came.
I'm not saying it's hard work, like working on a farm, but they certainly don't give everything to you on a silver platter,’ she added as her name was called for yet another fitting.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “on a silver platter” mean?

Given or presented something easily or with little effort required Literally: served on a valuable dish

Is “on a silver platter” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.