Not causing physical pain or distress; easy to endure or accomplish.
From 'pain' (from Latin 'poena' meaning punishment or penalty) plus the suffix '-less' meaning without. The figurative sense of 'easy to do' developed alongside the literal meaning of physical comfort.
The word reveals our fundamental human relationship with discomfort—we use 'painless' to describe everything from medical procedures to software installations. Interestingly, the phrase 'painless dentistry' became a marketing revolution in the 1840s with the introduction of anesthesia.
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