The Clog from OzYou Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
October 20th 2006 03:32
You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
“You can’t have your cake and eat it too” essentially means you can’t have one thing without the expense of another, or to want something more than you can handle. For example: if a man was to work so hard to pay for his expensive house, resulting in him not actually being home and using it very often, then one could say "Well, you can't have your cake and eat it too."
This is such a popular phrase, but totally inaccurate of course. Like most people would have realised, you can have your cake and eat it too. First you have it, and then you eat it! Lucky for me, and you, intelligent reader of my post, we now know that this wasn’t the original form of the phrase – it did once make sense.
According to Wikipedia, the figure of speech was first known in 1546, as "wolde you bothe eate your cake, and haue your cake?" i.e “would you both eat your cake, and have your cake?” meaning it’s impossible to eat your cake and still have it afterwards. But the modern version has the clauses reversed, and is a corruption first signalled in 1812.
Comedian George Carlin once had a go at the current version of the phrase (like many others have had I’m sure): “When people say, 'Oh you just want to have your cake and eat it too.' What good is a cake you can't eat? What should I eat, someone else's cake instead?"
I much prefer this quote about cake, from Fat Fighter Marjory Dawes of the comedy Little Britain: “Cake! Cake! Oh I just Looove a bit of cake! Cake! Cake! Aaaahhhhh Cake!”
Image in Public Domain
“You can’t have your cake and eat it too” essentially means you can’t have one thing without the expense of another, or to want something more than you can handle. For example: if a man was to work so hard to pay for his expensive house, resulting in him not actually being home and using it very often, then one could say "Well, you can't have your cake and eat it too."
This is such a popular phrase, but totally inaccurate of course. Like most people would have realised, you can have your cake and eat it too. First you have it, and then you eat it! Lucky for me, and you, intelligent reader of my post, we now know that this wasn’t the original form of the phrase – it did once make sense.
According to Wikipedia, the figure of speech was first known in 1546, as "wolde you bothe eate your cake, and haue your cake?" i.e “would you both eat your cake, and have your cake?” meaning it’s impossible to eat your cake and still have it afterwards. But the modern version has the clauses reversed, and is a corruption first signalled in 1812.
Comedian George Carlin once had a go at the current version of the phrase (like many others have had I’m sure): “When people say, 'Oh you just want to have your cake and eat it too.' What good is a cake you can't eat? What should I eat, someone else's cake instead?"
I much prefer this quote about cake, from Fat Fighter Marjory Dawes of the comedy Little Britain: “Cake! Cake! Oh I just Looove a bit of cake! Cake! Cake! Aaaahhhhh Cake!”
Image in Public Domain
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