"You can't eat your cake and have it too"

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This is the original expression and the one that makes sense. You can't eat your cake and still have it. The nonsensical "you can't have your cake and eat it too" has become more common.

how on earth can you eat a cake, and not have it.

I have two cakes.

You get that from a unibomber documentary ?

Eating your cake and having it too is easy as pie.

How does that make any sense?

Never understood that one...or the new, revised version, either.

Once you have eaten the cake, it has been consumed and is unusable. "Have" in this context is to possess something in a usable state, ergo "you can't eat your cake and (still) have it too." I guess it kinda works the other way, but in reverse order it more conveys the idea that you can possess a cake in a usable state, however you cannot consume it if you do. What then is the point of owning a cake you can't eat?

It's just another one of those stupid idioms that make no sense. Like having a "chip on one's shoulder'.

The original saying was
"You cannot eat your cake and have it still"
Literally taken this means that once you eat it, then it is gone. You cannot keep it.
Applying it metaphorically it means things like you can't buy things and keep your money- you actually have to give to get- and a lot of other common uses for its nonsensical counterpart.

Does that clear it up?

Last edited by The Musings Of The Lost on 11 Jan 2018, 1:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Every idiom has a story behind it, but because they were spread far more than their sources, some of these stores have gotten lost. People just don't bother to locate them, because the idioms themselves are so commonplace, the base meaning to them are as well.

Perhaps it's time for some new chip idioms.

Cindy: What the hell happened to my bag of Doritos?

Kim: Jeffrey must've grabbed it. He's always got a chip in his beard.

Does Bill Gates walk around with a silicon chip on his shoulder?

It's a cake walk!

No if you look closely you'll see that' it's a bitten off piece of Apple.

That one takes the cake.

Jenny: I don't want to do the cake walk!
Mother: You little brat! You always have a chip on your shoulder!
Jenny: That's just the icing on the cake.