What's the meaning of the phrase, You can't have your cake and Eat it too?

Question

I've heard it on Jeanie Ortega's song: Crowded. Papoose goes, "They say you can't have your cake and eat it too, tell me what's the meaning, what's the point of me having cake if I can't eat it?" I thought he made a good point. What's the meaning of that phrase?

Answer 1

To wish to have one's cake and eat it too (sometimes eat one's cake and have it too) is to want more than one can handle or deserve, or to try to have two incompatible things. This is a popular English idiomatic proverb, or figure of speech.

The phrase's earliest recording is from 1546 as "wolde you bothe eate your cake, and haue your cake?", alluding to the impossibility of eating your cake and still having it afterwards; the modern version (where the clauses are reversed) is a corruption which was first signaled in 1812.

Comedian George Carlin once critiqued this idiom by saying, "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?". Of course, in the original correct form (eat your cake and have it too), Carlin's critique does not apply.

Have Your Cake and Eat It Too is a book by Susan G. Purdy. Bob Dylan changed the phrase in his song "Lay Lady Lay" in the line: "You can have your cake and eat it, too."

Answer 2

It speaks to the simple fact in life that you cannot preserve the pristine state of an object or situation when the consumtion or alteration to the obect or situation will permanantly effect it and diminsh it's value in some way.

In the old days when times were tough a cake was a symbol of an uppperclass luxury and their decadant decoration was (and is) admired as much as the eating if it was intended or even more so.

In the case of many wedding cakes they are acually sheathed in a cake covering that must be removed in oreder to eat it.

Answer 3

Once you eat it, it's gone. You no longer have cake as something to say "Hey Everybody! I've GOT CAKE!" You have used up the inherent value of the cake by eating it. It represents the idea of a paradoxical situation, where you have to make a choice between two things. In the song, he's actually taking the cake part too literally. The point to the original saying is in the paradox, not the cake.

Answer 4

The meaning is this... If you eat the cake, then you will cease to have it. If you decide that you want to keep the cake, then you can't eat it. These two states are mutually exclusive. The expression is applied where a person has to make a choice from mutually exclusive options.

Answer 5

Like having a cake and being able to eat it that would be great right ? but sometimes u can see the cake but u cant eat it , like u cant always get waht u want or u can get what u want but no more than that.

Answer 6

The phrase is basically telling you that you cannot expect to have whatever you want without giving something in return. Let's say, you can't cheat on your "love" partner and expect them to also be happy. Or maybe more simple, you can't go to a store and acquire something without spending any money. It might be talking in terms of being selfish I guess.

Answer 7

It means that you often have to make a choice and stick with it. If you eat your cake, you no longer have it
(as a whole cake).

Answer 8

Isn't having it the same as eating it? I'm having a piece of cake for dinner. I'm eating a piece of cake for dinner. I never got that quote...lol.

Answer 9

Example: You shouldn't have your wife and a mistress too. You just can't have some things the way you might like them. And no, a good answer to my example would not be , I just want the icing on the side.

Answer 10

Its like you telling your girlfriend "I love you but I want to have sex with other people too." The phrase isn't that clear, but thats what it means, basically. You can't have both, its one or the other.