where is the saying "You cannot have your cake and it," derived from and what does it really mean.?

Answer 1

cake and eat it? It is english and it means you cannot have the both. Put it another way a man might want the sex but he doesn't want the responsibility that goes with it. that is the expression it was used with.

Answer 2

In the English language, there is a proverb: "You cannot have your cake and eat it too." This saying expresses the idea that one cannot always have the best of everything and is sometimes forced to make an either/or choice. The first appearance of this saying is trace to John Heywood's A Dialogue Conteynyng Prouerbes and Epigrammes (1546): "Wolde ye bothe eate your cake, and haue your cake?" In the United States, it first appeared in the 1742 Colonial Records of Georgia in Original Papers, 1735-1752. In the beginning of his poem On Fame of 1816 , John Keats cites the proverb: "You cannot eat your cake and have it too."

That cake should be the object of desire attests to its significant monetary and social value once upon a time. Whereas commoners were lucky to eat bread, only the rich nobles can afford to eat cakes. In Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau quotes a certain unnamed insensitive princess who, upon being told about the starvation among the masses, replied "S'il n'ont pas de pain, qu'ils mangent de la brioche!" ("If they don't have bread, let them eat cake"). This saying becomes the epitome of royal callousness and rationalizes the French Revolution. This saying is usually attributed to Marie Antoinette, the wife of King Louis XVI, when in fact it was said 100 years earlier by Marie-Thérèse, the wife of Louis XIV.

Today, most societies are more egalitarian than feudal times, and the cooking technology, ingredients and recipes have diffused the production and consumption of cakes to much of the population. In fact, any decent supermarket display would probably contain a wide variety of cakes of different ingredients, shapes, sizes, colors and flavors.

The subject of this article is the ponqué. For Spanish-speakers in many parts of the world, this term is unfamiliar. In fact, they may have less of a chance to guess its meaning than an English-only speaker. After all, the non-Spanish-speaking English speaker needs only repeat the word a few times: "Ponqué ... ponqué ... pound cake!" Indeed, this is the cake that is known as the pound cake to the English and the Paté à Genoise to the French. The term ponqué is used in Latin American countries such as Colombia and Venezuela. The ponqué is made from common ingredients such as eggs, flour, sugar, baking powder, yeast, and together with whatever else your imagination can bring together.

We will now cite some survey data from the TGI Colombia study. This is a survey of 7,020 persons between the ages of 12 to 64 years old who were interviewed during 2001 in Colombia. During the interview, the survey respondents were asked if they had eaten any ponqué during the past 7 days. 55.6% of the respondents indicated that they had done so. That is more than half of the population.

Answer 3

Many of you guys got it wrong. it's a metaphor. The correct form is " you can't eat your cake and have it." it means that you can't gain advantages without getting disadvantages. Or that if you go through the fast way, there would be some disadvantages and trials you'd face. it's true it's true. For instance. One day if for the thief another day is for the owner. the thief might be lucky for years, but will get caught one day.

I see that many of you guys misinterpreted that adage.

Answer 4

Because the particular wording of that makes a person think he can't have cake and eat it as well it always made me think, "Of course I can have cake and eat it."

What it really means is you can't keep it/hang onto it and yet also eat it so you won't still have it.

The saying should be, "You can't hold onto your cake and also eat it so you no longer have it" (but that would be cumbersome, wouldn't it). I, personally, think if you have cake you ought to eat it rather than letting it go stale. What good is "having" stale cake.

Finally, if you eat some of the cake and keep some of the cake - you get to have cake and eat it too!!

That's a stupid saying, isn't it...

Answer 5

This expression is always misquoted (including by you)
The real expression is
You cannot EAT your cake and have it too
Meaning that once you have consumed something, it is no longer there for you to own
This concept can be applied to a lot of things.

( ^ Marie Antoinette indeed! Some people should just watch tv instead of answering here)

Answer 6

It just means that somebody wants to have something both ways when only one way is possible. If you have a cake, and then eat it, you no longer "have" it, because you ate it! Make sense?

Answer 7

Not sure where it came from, but it just means that you can't have everything your way. "You can't have your cake and eat it too." = Because you can either have the cake, or eat it. But you can't do both, because once you eat it, it's gone. So you can have it OR eat it, but not both. It just means you can't have things both ways.

As for the Marie Antionette suggestion above, that's inaccurate. Marie Antoinette was known for saying, "Let them eat cake." She said this about the hungry peasants who were angry that they could no longer get bread.

Answer 8

The complete saying is

YOU CAN NOT HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO....

Meaning, you can not want to sacrifice something and then not expect to meet with success if you do not follow through on it.

Think of someone loosing weight...If you are dieting you can have cake....you just can't eat it.

Answer 9

I dont' know. what good is cake if you cant eat it?

Answer 10

It's just a saying that means you can't have it all ways!