I always hear people saying “Well, she just wants her cake and to eat it too.”
Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with cake? Eat it? What are you supposed to do with it, look at it?
What is the story behind this saying? I understand that it’s supposed to mean two things you want are incompatible, but how did this saying come to mean that? Because it just doesn’t make sense to me. Why can’t one have their cake and eat it as well?
damn, you’re on time. thanks, sam.
If have your cake, you haven’t eaten it. If you eat your cake you no longer have it.
Thus, the having and the eating are incompatible.
Or see samclem’s link. (which I would have seen had I previewed)
I learned about this phrase in economics. IIRC, it had something to do with opportunity costs…
The opportunity cost of eating your cake was having your cake, because you can’t do both.
:smack:
And here I was, thinking that it was because “having cake” is often used to me “eating cake”.
I say ‘You can’t eat your cake and have it too’. To me, it’s clearer that way.
Of course, Ted Kaczynski said it that way. (Only I do not make or mail bombs, and I like technology.)
I always thought that was an admonition to make more cakes!
If you have your cake in front of you, you have it in front of you. If you eat it you have it and all of its delicious goodness in your belly. Either way you have it.
Oh?
But you still DO have it.
It is just IN a different place!
How true.
Me too, once I figured out what the heck it meant.
Is the former cake stuff in your belly cake? I’d hate to see that stuff in front of me on my birthday with a candle in it. 
So if you’re at a birthday party and the host says, “who’s having cake?” you should probably keep your hand down and wait for him to ask who’s eating cake.
Well if you insist on that interpretation of “having” then the phrase simply means you can’t eat something twice. Same implication, really.
One is unable to possess their comestibles and consume them also.
Usually if I have my cake and eat it too, a few days later it goes into the sewer. Now what?
This thread takes the cake. Takes the cake.
<George Carlin> But where do you take a cake? You gotta take a cake somewhere. You know where I take a cake? …Down to the bakery to see all the other cakes .(insane look on face) </George carlin>
More cake!