The meaning of the idiom “You can’t have your cake and eat it too” may be really hard to grasp: where’s the fun in having a cake if you can’t eat it? Let’s dig deeper. And discover how a word may change our lives forever. All this while enjoying our cake.
Meaning
I hear you, this proverb can be puzzling: if we get a cake we’re supposed to eat it, aren’t we? Or are we so masochist we just stare at it, drooling? What the saying means is that you can’t have things both ways. Now, I would have something to object to the cake as the best example of something you can’t divide: do you usually eat a whole cake in one fell swoop like there’s no tomorrow or do you take one slice at a time, thus eating and saving it for later? Ok, now it’s starting to look like Schrödinger’s cat, but wouldn’t a muffin or a biscuit be more appropriate? I know, I know, I’m being too fussy. Yet…
Our only complaint is that the video doesn't include the live footage that the teasers did, but you can't eat your cake and have it too.
His answer was, in effect, that you can't have your cake and eat it.
There’s another version of this saying, one which makes more sense to me: “You can’t eat your cake and have it too”. Reversing the sentence, things do make more sense to me: you can’t expect to save your cake for later, if you already ate it. Apparently it’s also the oldest version: according to the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs John Heywood used it first in a 1546 compendium:
Wolde ye bothe eate your cake, and haue your cake?
Another testimony comes from The Scourge of Folly. Consisting of satyricall Epigramms, and others in honor of many noble and worthy Persons of our Land. Together, With a pleasant (though discordant) Descant vpon most English Prouerbes: and others (1611?), by the English poet John Davies ‘(1565?-1618):
‘A man cannot eat his cake and haue it stil:’
That may he, vnlesse his retention be ill.
Jonathan Swift used the “cake” in his 1738 farce, Polite Conversation:
She cannot eat her cake and have her cake
In 1749 Swift’s Polite Conversation by one Timothy Fribble and renamed Tittle Tattle. In his work though, the two phrases were flipped, and the sentence became
She cannot have her cake and eat her cake.
You can't have your cake and eat it, or how an idiom can change your life
This ordering, with the “having” preceding the “eating,” became the norm over the 19th and 20th centuries. However, some kept using the older version. Just a few nitpickers, apparently, and karma must really hate nitpickers, because one of them was Theodore J. Kaczynski, AKA Unabomber, and what led the FBI analysts working on his case to identify him as the author of a huge number of terrorist attacks was indeed his use of the older saying in his eco-anarchist manifesto.
When Kaczynski’s brother David read the treatise he was reminded of previous letters and works by Theodore and realized that the authors were one in the same. Thus he hired a private investigator to gather evidence and write a dossier which was then handed to the authorities. Kaczynski was indicted on 10 counts of bomb-related activity and 3 counts of murder. You can’t use infrequent versions of an idiom and expect no one will notice… Now this is exactly what I meant with the expression “Words can change your life”. For better or worse, I would add.
Ludwig’s wrap up
Idioms can be tricky, they can result difficult to understand to non-native speakers, and sometimes also to the natives. This is the case of the proverb “You can’t have your cake and eat it too”: the first reaction is being confused by the two verbs, eat and have. If I can have a cake, why on earth should I not eat it? However, the real meaning is different: you can’t save for later the cake you’re eating now, so you can’t enjoy both of two desirable but mutually exclusive alternatives. The older version was different, or rather its order was: the verb “eat” came before “have”. This is also how Theodore J. Kaczynski, AKA Unabomber, was using it in his manifesto, and this is what gave him away. Language can be such a powerful tool sometimes…
