Does anyone know how the phrase "Have your cake and eat it to" came about and who first said it?

Question

Always wondered how this phrase came about.

Answer 1

To wish to have one's cake and eat it too (sometimes eat one's cake and have it too) is to want more than one can handle or deserve, or to try to have two incompatible things. This is a popular English idiomatic proverb, or figure of speech.



The phrase's earliest recording is from 1546 as "wolde you bothe eate your cake, and haue your cake?" alluding to the impossibility of eating your cake and still having it afterwards; the modern version (where the clauses are reversed) is a corruption which was first signaled in 1812.

Answer 2

The phrase's earliest recording is from 1546 as, " whole you bothe eate your cake, and haue your cake?" alluding to the impossibility of eating your cake and still having it afterwards; the modern version (where the clauses are reversed) is a corruption which was first signaled in 1812. Comedian George Carlin once critiqued this idiom by saying, "When people say, "Oh you just want to have your cake and eat ot too." What good is a cake you can't eat? What should I eat, someone else's cake instead?" Of course, in the original correct form (eat your cake and have ot too), Carlin's critique does not apply.

Answer 3

It's first mentioned in 1546 in a book of proverbs by John Heywood.

Here's a link with more info (Phrases.org is a free website):



http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/7/messages/470.html



I think it comes from the time when people literally didn't get cake very often. Many of them were struggling to get enough bread. So just imagine if you are very poor and maybe once a year you have enough money for cake (like at Easter or Christmas, for example). It's something special, so you don't want to just eat it straight away. But it's food, and it cost money...



You see the problem?



Bye,



Lenky

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

it started with Marie Antoinette when she said "let them eat cake" when speaking of the peasants. However, what most people don't realize is that the cake she was referring to was not what we would call cake. It was actually everything that spilled out of the pans (usually at a bakery) and onto the bottom of the oven where it "caked" on. over the years, the meaning has changed until we ended up with the phrase, "Have your cake and eat it to" meaning to get everything without having to compromise.

Answer 6

Marie Antoinette never said anything about cake. That was a rumor spread during the revolution to incite the people against the monarchy by radicals.



have a nice day.

Answer 7

The quote you are probably thinking of is "Let them Eat Cake", said by French Queen Marie Antoinette. However, this is an urban myth; she never really said that.

Answer 8

It may have originated with Marie Antoinette in the French Revolution when she said of the peasants: "let them eat cake!"

Answer 9

I don't know who started it, but is often misquoted. You CAN have your cake (today) and eat it too (tomorrow). The real quote is, "you can't eat you cake, and have it too"

Answer 10

the french queen who was executioned because she said let them eat cake?? sorry, no clue!

Answer 11

i dont know



but thank u for answering my questions



email me to chat

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Answer 12

I have no idea, but my mother says it all the time and it irritates the hell out of me!!!