Monday, April 10, 2023

Pedantically Yours

That’s because the phrase as we recite it is backwards. 

It should be “eating your cake, and having it, too.” You can have your cake (who else could?), and you can eat your cake. But you can’t eat your cake AND have it.

Which is the point: wanting an impossibility. You have your cake; or you eat your cake. You can’t eat your cake and still have it (to eat).

Well, I suppose in a cartoon you can. But in cartoons you can talk to a rabbit (who looks nothing like a rabbit), or a beagle who turns his doghouse into a Sopwith Camel. But those don’t fit as neatly into metaphors of desire and reality.

No comments:

Post a Comment