It's NOT 'have your cake and eat it too'

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Sorry bit of a rant here

I hate it when people write or say 'have your cake and eat it too'. It's 'have your cake and eat it'.

And while I'm at it, it's not 'to each their own' but 'each to their own'. 'To each their own' makes no sense.

Rant over. Thank you

Some people think the phrase should in fact read "you can't eat your cake and have it", because once you've eaten your cake, you no longer "have" it.

From http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-hav2.htm

[Q] From Colin Rogers and Alison Braid-Skolski: “We are perplexed by the confusing phrase have your cake and eat it. I have always thought this a common misconception and it should be eat your cake and have it?”

[A] Whoever expected English idioms to be logical? The usual way in which one sees this one is as the negative you can’t have your cake and eat it, expressing the idea that you have to make an either/or choice, that you can’t reconcile two mutually incompatible situations. It would be a little clearer if it were written as you can’t both have your cake and eat it. It would be more obviously the same as the other form if you also rewrote that as you can’t eat your cake and still have it.

Quite why the saying has settled on this form isn’t clear. I learned it as a youth as you can’t eat your cake and have it, too, and there are more examples in my databases that way than in the can’t have your cake and eat it inversion. Those who first used it certainly agreed with your sense of logic. Though presumably rather older, it is first written down in John Heywood’s A Dialogue Conteynyng Prouerbes and Epigrammes of 1562: “Wolde ye bothe eate your cake, and haue your cake?”. John Keats quoted it as eat your cake and have it at the beginning of his poem On Fame in 1816; Franklin D Roosevelt borrowed it in that form for his State of the Union Address in 1940; a search of nineteenth-century literature shows it to be about twice as common as the other. But a quick Google search shows the have your cake and eat it form is now about ten times as frequent, and all my dictionaries of idioms and proverbs cite it that way.

One of life’s little mysteries, I suppose. But whichever way you say it, you can be sure that it will be understood. So there’s no need to worry much over the logic!

can too!

Okay, the second one I can understand, but adding 'too' doesn't exactly change the meaning of the sentence.

Thus it is redundant and therefore extremely annoying!

You're going to try and remove all redundant words from the English language? Your sentence didn't need the word 'therefore.'

Depends on dialects too - with different dialects come different idioms.

I've always heard it as "Can't have your cake and eat it too, y'know."

Tautologies such as "foot pedal" and "reverse back" annoy me too. I even regard the expression "contradiction of terms" as a tautology; the notion of "words against words" is contained within the word "contradiction" and to follow this with "terms" (also referring to "words") is redundant.

No, but this example is extra annoying


Shh

..and then there's Marie Antionette and her 'let them eat cake' crack...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_one%2 ... eat_it_too


My pet hate is the abuse of 'gotten', but I resist the urge to point it out for the most part.

It doesn't change the meaning, but it adds to it. And it frankly makes more sense with the "too". Indicates we are talking about the two at the same time. It does make much more sense with eat first though.

As for "to each his/their own", etc, makes sense to me that way.

And, apparently, "to each his own" translates the Latin "suum cuique", which is short for "suum cuique pulchrum est" (to each his own is beautiful).

I believe the "too" implies that the having and the eating of the cake can't happen at the same time. Once you eat the cake, you can no longer have it. So in this case I really think the "too" is needed. If you just said "Have your cake and eat it" that would be as meanless as "Earn some money and spend it".




"To each their own" is an archaic saying. It's not meant to fit in perfectly with the grammar of today. There are many examples of this, like "Good bye". It makes no sense in today's language, but why change it when everyone knows what it implies?

I think you'd be better off picking on actual examples of bad grammar, like people who say "be coz" instead of "because".

The "too" does not change the meaning of the first sentence; if included, it indicates that both are priorities instead of one having value over the other, that the combination is what is desired. In the second, while the structure is less precise, it does follow in stylistic conventions that held in place over a century before... and it does make sense to me.


M.

'Same Difference' gets me; it implies (to me) a comparison of a minimum of 3 items... Thankfully, it's dropped out of popular speech...

The OP would hate listening to me teach... "same much" is heard often.


M.