Have Your Cake and Eat it, Too

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Larry from Rancho Penosquitos.

Hi Larry, how are you doing?

Great.

What can we do for you today?

I have a question about an expression that I’ve heard for most of my life, and it’s about people that might mention someone wants to have their cake and eat it too.

I’ve heard this, and you kind of just take it for granted, and to me it kind of meant about having something both ways.

And many years ago, my wife and I were taking a class, a night class in humanities, and the professor indicated that most people say this expression incorrectly, that it should be the opposite, that it really should be that a person wants to eat their cake and have it too.

And I thought about that, and it seemed to make some sense that that might actually make a better fit for having it both ways.

And I just wanted to get your input on this and where it came from and which is the right version.

So your professor said that eat your cake and have it too is somehow, what, more logical?

Yes, because if they have their cake, then they can certainly eat it, but then it’s gone.

Whereas if you eat your cake and still have it, it’s kind of having it both ways.

You’re enjoying the cake, but you can still have the cake also.

Well, you have it for a little while, 24 hours or so, right?

But if you eat your cake and have it too, then it indicates it’s still there.

I see. Well, your professor’s right in that that was the earlier form of this expression.

It goes all the way back to the 16th century, at least.

Eat your cake and have it too.

And somehow we did flip it around.

I’m not exactly sure when that happened, but it’s not the first time that that kind of thing has happened in English.

Think of the expression, the proof is in the pudding.

Right.

Originally that was the proof is in the eating of the pudding.

The proof is in the pudding doesn’t make so much sense.

But I don’t know.

I mean, I could argue that your professor had the original version right, but I suspect that my co-host is going to say, oh, but everybody understands, have your cake and eat it too.

Well, don’t dismiss that out of hand, because that’s actually all that really matters here.

Anything else is irrelevant nitpicking, right?

It’s about being understood.

Right.

No, really, I mean, nobody misunderstands you in the least if you say it the other way, right?

Well, you take it, I mean, like I said, it’s something I’ve taken for granted.

You hear it so often that when you hear it, you absolutely know what it means.

And it’s only when he brought it up that I started to actually think about it.

Yeah.

See, that’s the gist of an idiom.

And this is why the idioms are best not broken down into their component pieces.

They’re treated as entities.

They’re treated altogether as one unified expression and not as individual words.

Otherwise you get this kind of incongruity and it starts to befuddle you and you start to ask questions that really are never going to lead you anywhere productive.

Right.

It led Larry to A Way with Words.

I think that’s pretty productive.

But have your cake and eat it too is perfectly fine.

There’s nothing wrong with it.

The other one is fine too, and it’s not more correct just because it’s older.

Alright Larry, well thanks very much for calling.

Well thank you.

Thank you Larry, bye bye.

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