Idiom

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While I'm familiar with the idiom "You can't have your cake and eat it too" it's bothering me quite a bit. Does anyone understand it? Why is having a piece of cake and eating it difficult?

Because once you have eaten your cake, you no longer have it. For some reason that one confused me for many years also.

I suppose that makes sense. Logically one would say that they had their cake once they ate it... Bloody idioms.

In italy we have a similar idioms "non puoi avere la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca", in english I can translate it to "you can't have the bottle full and the wife drunken". It simply state that you cannot have "everything", if you use something you have to have another thing you usually consume the first one.

I am glad you posted this. I cannot, and have never been able to tolerate that phrase. It annoys me. What is the point of having cake and not being able to eat it? I have had people tell me what it is trying to say... and usually I am pretty good about understanding idioms and metaphors. That one just seems ridiculous to me. I make cakes sometimes... if I eat a piece of that cake, I still have cake left. What re they talking about... I still have a lot more cake to eat... Meh. "Can't cut the mustard" is another one that baffles me. It would seem to me that if a person was sitting around cutting a liquid like condiment... well that might suggest that they are likely the one who is not necessarily adequate to preform whatever task may be at hand. My head knows what these are supposed to mean, but I wonder why they found the worst choices of words to express these concepts.

According to "The Phrase Finder" -- http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/index.html --the original expression was written differently and makes sense:

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

The expression that drives me nuts is when someone says he or she "could care less" when, in fact, he or she actually means to be saying he or she could *not* care less.

Haha. I never really got that cake one, either. I kind of knew what people meant by it, that you can't have everything, but i didn't really see how the saying made any kind of sense. I always thought "well why would i even want cake in the first place if i couldn't eat it? isn't that the point of having cake?" Oh, and the "could care less" thing bothers me too.

The original phrase was massacred on 4chan and turned into an internet meme that oddly took over the original phrase. It makes about as much sense as "It's over 9000!!"

The only reason I understood it when I first saw it was because I recognized the original statement and realized it was a meme.

In this context "have" means "keep".
You can't keep your cake and eat it, too. Once you've ate it, it is no longer there.

That one never made sense to me either. Why would anyone want a cake they're not going to eat?

From a couple sites, including wikipedia, it says it roughly means "you can't have things both ways"

wiki

Another site says: "If someone wants to have their cake and eat it too, they want everything their way, especially when their wishes are contradictory."

usingenglish

I remember asking about the cake idiom when I was a kid, because it made no sense at all. once I understood it means that if you eat it, you don't have it anymore, it made sense, but it took some time hearing it in context to understand it means you can't have things both ways (or more than one way).

the saying "couldn't care less" is often misquoted as "could care less" which is wrong. if you can care less, then you care to some extent, so it usually contributes to a nonsense declaration. I puzzled that one out as a kid after hearing it both ways and concluding the former makes sense while the latter usually makes none.

I'm always tempted to reply to "I could care less" with "should I try to make you, then?"

I didn't understand that saying either, because I don't think it is possible to eat cake you do not have.

It would make more sense to say that "You can't have your cake after you have already eaten it."

Or "You can't have cake that you already ate."