What does "Have your cake and eat it too" mean?

[coloradodem2005]

I can barely understand the saying. I know more or less what it means, but where did it come from?

[Guy Fawkes]

1. It means you can't have everything you want.

[coloradodem2005]

2. Yeah, but how does having your cake and eating it too...

...have to do with having everything you want? If I have cake, I am going to eat it.

[Beware the Beast Man]

4. It means

Giving birth to a dessert pastry, then consuming it. :shrug:

[philosophie_en_rose]

8. If you eat your cake, you won't have it any longer.

It's nice to have cake. It's enjoyable to eat cake. However, you can't have both at once. Once you've eaten the cake, then you can't have it.

Technically, you can both eat and have cake, while you're eating the cake.

[Blue-Jay]

12. Yes, but what if I only eat half of the cake?

Then I'll still have cake, yet have also eaten it.

[JVS]

3. If you have eaten the cake you no longer have it.

In order to keep having your cake you cannot eat it.

[southpaw]

You have a cake... You are happy that you have it.

If you eat the cake, you don't have it any more...

That's the way I understand it.

[soothsayer]

5. It should be, You can't eat your cake and have it too.

Means you can't BOTH eat your cake and still have (save, keep, hoard) it.

[Mountainman]

6. Say your boss gave you the day off and on top of that he/she paid you too!

Having your cake is getting the day off.

eating it too is getting paid for the day off.

[mac56]

7. Wanting both to use up and retain a certain thing.

Wanting to eat the cake, but not wanting to be out of cake.

[yellowcanine]

9. It means you are happy as a pig in shit.

.

[rsdsharp]

10. It means

trying to have it both ways. If you have a piece of cake in front of you, you have two real choices. You can eat it, in which case it's gone, or you can keep it (continue to have it) and save it for eating another time. Realistically, you can't do both. So someone trying to have their cake and eat it, too, is being unrealistic, or dishonest, or both.

Like, say, trickle down economics; the theory that we can have less and less tax revenue, and not run a deficit, even given the same or increased levels of spending.

[Bertha Venation]

11. weird, I looked it up the other day because I wondered what it meant

from The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition, 2002

"You can’t have your cake and eat it too"

The things people want are often incompatible. This proverb is easier to grasp if it is understood to mean “You can’t eat your cake and have it too.”

http://www.bartleby.com/59/3/youcanthavey.html

[ET Awful]

13. Let's use a current illustration . . .

the phrase is basically talking about having contradictions in desires.

For instance, you can't give monster tax cuts and have a balanced budget.

[trof]

14. So...which is better?

The ANTICIPATION of eating the cake?
Or the actual mastication?
Your choice tells a lot about what kind of person you are.
or not

No, this isn't a sex thread.
;-)

[JVS]

15. Eating it.

It is through the eating that the anticipation is realized.

Eating cake would still be good if it were not anticipated, for instance a surprise cake serving.

Anticipation would not be satisfying if it were never consumated.

It is in the eating of the cake that cake fulfills its essence.

See the onion article about a stoner's out of cheetos experience