Eat your cake.....

Posted by GPP on October 27, 2003

In Reply to: Eat your cake..... posted by Yvonne on October 26, 2003

: The full expression is "You can't have your cake and eat it too" -- which makes it self-explanatory. As you rightly said, it means you can either have [keep] something or consume it, but not both. Over time, many well-known expressions develop "shorthand" versions (because listeners are familiar with them). "Have your cake and eat it" is one such example.

Original post:
I often hear this phrase miss spoken.
As I understand it, it should read "Eat your cake and have it too". I once heard it explained that you can eat your cake and not have it, have your cake and not eat it, but the trick is to "eat your cake and have it too."

Yvonne gives the correct phrasing, but I'm curious to know HOW you've heard it misspoken. As simply "eat your cake", or in some other form?

Could it have been somehow confused with an entirely different expression, "Let them eat cake" (which is at Meanings and Origins, under 'L')?