Why Can't I Have My Cake And Eat It Too?

There are multiple variations of this idiom, but the gist goes, “you can’t have your cake and eat it too”, essentially meaning you can’t have both things: there are two options and you must choose one.

People often have a problem with this expression because they take it literally: “why the hell can’t I have my cake and eat it too? Why make it in the first place?” This is a misunderstanding of what the expression means, not helped by the unclear word order. Perhaps a better way to put it would be “to eat you cake and still have it” or “to have a cake for later and still eat it now”.

This isn’t a riddle, but a proverb to advise against rash or hasty decisions, and the consequences you will face. Once you’ve gobbled that cake down, be aware that the cake is no longer going to be there to eat later. Akin to “you can’t have it both ways” (for example, in choosing to leave the European Union, while still wanting to retain all the same benefits that it offers, Britain could certainly be accused of wanting to have their cake and eat it too.)

So, if we can’t have our cake and eat it too, then what are we to do?

History and the Unabomber

The earliest known use of the expression (or a form of it, anyway) was way back in 1538, making this one of the oldest proverbs/idioms/whatever-you-want-to-call-it still in modern us. This came in a letter from Thomas Howard (the Duke of Norfolk) to Thomas Cromwell (Earl of Essex):

“a man can not have his cake and eat his cake”

Interestingly (for me at least) this is the current order of the phrase, namely have-eat. But with this early exception, all further records of this expression being used have the order reversed. For example, in 1546 John Heywood wrote:

“wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?

And then right through to Jonathan Swift’s Polite Conversation in 1738, in which a character remarks: “she cannot eat her cake and have her cake”. This order certainly makes more sense, and is something that many writers and linguists have been pointing out for some time. To “have your cake and eat it too”, suggests having a cake and not eating it at all, while to “eat your cake and have it too” more clearly highlights the conflicting ideals here. It is impossible to eat your cake and still have it.

Yet somewhere along the line, the modern have-eat variant became the norm. Swift’s work itself was posthumously edited as early as 1749 with the above being changed to: “And she cannot have her Cake and eat her Cake”. By the 1930s/40s, this order was firmly established in the English lexicon, so much so that saying it otherwise does stand out and sound a little off (even if it does make more sense linguistically), as was the case with Ted Kaczynski — the American terrorist also known as the Unabomber.

In his manifesto, sent to newspapers to publish in the wake of his bombings, the mystery Unabomber said the following:

“As for the negative consequences of eliminating industrial society — well, you can’t eat your cake and have it too.”

This eat-have variant struck an FBI forensic linguist as particularly odd. Such a turn of phrase, he thought, would be unique enough to help find the culprit. Already on their radar, the FBI investigated Ted Kaczynski further, and found a letter he had written to his mother which also used the same phrase in the same way. Along with other evidence, this allowed them to eventually arrest and prosecute Kaczynski in 1996.

Language is a funny old thing, isn’t it.

Cake from around the world

Ultimately, this is another example of the English language taking a perfectly simple concept and making a proverb that doesn’t really make a whole lick of sense in the modern day.

That being said, nothing is more essentially English in saying “you can’t have it both ways” than talking about cake. Looking at variants of this expression from around the world, you get a small insight in to what speaks to a people’s ideals:

• Albanian — “you can’t have a swim and not get wet”.
• Italian — “to have a barrel full of wine and the wife drunk”.
• Tamil — “to have both the moustache and to drink the porridge”.
• German — “you can’t dance at two weddings”.
• French — “you can’t both have the butter and the money used to buy the butter”.

The list goes on, and if we got in to all them one by one we’d be here all day, so let’s just stick with cake, shall we?

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Sources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_can%27t_have_your_cake_and_eat_it
• https://www.insider.com/what-does-have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too-mean-2016-11
• https://knowyourphrase.com/you-cant-have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too
• https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/terrorism/ted-kaczynski-the-unabomber/