"You Can't Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too" Idiom Meaning, Origin & History | Superduper English
Channel: Superduper English Idioms
Date: 11/06/2020

0:00 - How to Say, “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”
0:24 - Examples of “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”
1:20 - Meaning of “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”
1:39 - Origin of “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”
3:27 - More Examples of “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”
4:27 - Conclusion

“You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”

You might’ve heard someone say, “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too,” when someone is trying to tell another person that they can’t have it all.

Or perhaps someone is being greedy and wants too much. An onlooker might say, “You’re being greedy! You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”

This idiom sounds funny, doesn’t it? Isn’t “having” something the same as “eating” something? Having a coffee surely means drinking a coffee, right?

Well, it is correct that having lunch or having a snack means eating lunch or eating a snack, but in the case of this idiom, “have” refers to keeping - that is, not eating.

So, “you can’t have your cake and eat it, too” simply means that you cannot eat your cake if you want to save it. You cannot save your cake if you want to eat it.

The earliest recording of this idiom comes from a letter between Thomas, Duke of Norfolk and a politician, Thomas Cromwell, in England, 1538: “A man can not have his cake and eat his cake.”

Of course, the idiom was in common usage before the letter was written - the letter is simply the earliest known recording of it.

In other languages, there are many interesting idioms or proverbs that are similar to, “have your cake and eat it, too”.

In Albanian, they say, “to take a swim and not get wet.”

In French, they say, “to want the butter and the money used to buy the butter.”

In Hindi, they say, “heads are mine and tails are mine, too.”

In Hungarian, they say, “to ride two horses with one backside.”

In Japanese, they say, “if you chase two rabbits at the same time, you will catch not one.”

Without a doubt, elders have been telling the young not to be too greedy for many thousands of years.

Suppose you are having dinner with your crush at 7 o’clock, but have received free movie tickets for 8 o’clock on the same night…

… your best friend might tell you that you can’t do both, “You don’t want to cut your dinner short nor do you want to miss half the movie! You can’t have your cake and eat it, too!”

Perhaps your friend has been exercising a lot in order to lose weight, but wants to go with you to a buffet dinner…

… you might say, “Won’t an all-you-can-eat buffet ruin your efforts to lose weight? You can’t have your cake and eat it, too!”

Whatever situation you encounter in which someone tries to have two incompatible things at once or is being too greedy, feel free to say, “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too!”

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