Examples of Stupid Idioms

AnathemicOne said:
I'm saying that's my interpretation of it. I fail to see how its wrong given the context of the idiom in how its worded.
Click to expand...

Yeah, so what would be an example of the way you've heard it used in arguments? I've never heard it said in such a way that it could be interpreted as shaming a person so I would appreciate an example for context here
 
Honestly just change the idiom to "You can't have cake and have it still" or "You can't possess the cake after you've eaten it." Having "have" before "eat" doesn't make sense because you need to have the thing in order to eat it.
 
AnathemicOne said:
Honestly just change the idiom to "You can't have cake and have it still" or "You can't possess the cake after you've eaten it." Having "have" before "eat" doesn't make sense because you need to have the thing in order to eat it.
Click to expand...

Honestly, the rest of us are fine with the original order.

The Wiktionary article even addresses this exact thread.
 
AnathemicOne said:
Honestly just change the idiom to "You can't have cake and have it still" or "You can't possess the cake after you've eaten it." Having "have" before "eat" doesn't make sense because you need to have the thing in order to eat it.
Click to expand...

Ok, I will let the National Idiom Board notified so that they can change the style books and get out an APB
 
AnathemicOne said:
That's true, the idiom isn't "You can't spend money and have it too" its "You can't have cake and eat it too". Hell even "have" in your example is switched in the idiom.
Click to expand...

Ok, does this help? You cannot possess a five dollar bill and then eat that five dollar bill and still have the five dollar bill left to spend and enjoy. Just like you can't have a cake and eat it too.
 
pixeldash said:
Ok, does this help? You cannot possess a five dollar bill and then eat that five dollar bill and still have the five dollar bill left to spend and enjoy. Just like you can't have a cake and eat it too.
Click to expand...

But with the modifier of "can", "have" can be the equivalent of "eat", for example:

"I can have cake" = "I can eat cake"

Izuna said:
Honestly, the rest of us are fine with the original order.

The Wiktionary article even addresses this exact thread.
Click to expand...

I'm not the first to bring up this stupid idiom's confusion, do a quick search on GAF and others have pointed this out.
 
AnathemicOne said:
Bullshit, if one wanted to use a hypothetical in an example one would preface it. Shoving a hypothetical metaphor with no context is poor arguing. Hence why the idiom is stupid, hence the thread title.
Click to expand...
Nah the hypothetical is definitely there, you're just not grasping it.

If I'm talking to my gym buddy and say "we can't play hockey and soccer too" because the pick-up hockey and soccer games are scheduled at the same time, I'm implying a hypothetical situation. We haven't decided which option to pick yet.

It's probably easier to think about the conditional sentence "if you eat your cake, you won't have it too". That is clearly describing a hypothetical.
 
Kazerei said:
Nah the hypothetical is definitely there, you're just not grasping it.

If I'm talking to my gym buddy and say "we can't play hockey and soccer too" because the pick-up hockey and soccer games are scheduled at the same time, I'm implying a hypothetical situation. We haven't decided which option to pick yet.

It's probably easier to think about the conditional sentence "if you eat your cake, you won't have it too". Like that is clearly describing a hypothetical.
Click to expand...

Yes, but that's not what the idiom is. Its "You can't have your cake and eat it too", if it were reversed that yeah it'll make more sense (I'll still somewhat argue it due to the context of food).
 
AnathemicOne said:
But with the modifier of "can", "have" can be the equivalent of "eat", for example:

"I can have cake" = "I can eat cake"



I'm not the first to bring up this stupid idiom's confusion, do a quick search on GAF and others have pointed this out.
Click to expand...

That's fine to be confused. But after reading all the examples in this thread of how to interpret the idiom the right way, can you now see how the saying makes sense when interpreted correctly?
 
Aselith said:
And what happened as a result when others brought it up?
Click to expand...

Unresolved, hence why I created a thread about it.

pixeldash said:
That's fine to be confused. But after reading all the examples in this thread of how to interpret the idiom the right way, can you now see how the saying makes sense when interpreted correctly?
Click to expand...

No I don't again, is the following wrong?

"I can eat cake" = "I can have cake"

If not, then the correct reading would be "You can't have cake and eat it too" = "You can't eat cake and eat it too", its redundant.
 
AnathemicOne said:
I'll still take the fallacy as literal, an appeal to the stone, the physical stone is a fallacy both metaphorically and literally.
Click to expand...
What does that even mean?
How is a stone literally a logical fallacy?
That's not what it's about. It means to call something absurd without providing evidence of it. Different from a "proof by assertion" fallacy where a position is stated without proof of it and letting just the statement itself stand as proof even in front of rebuttal.

It seems to me like you are advocating for ignorance. Language is built on shared standards and conventions, ignoring them and trying to act superior when you misunderstand what other people are saying because of ignorance is not a good look.

For example in this exchange:
If people say "No you can't do that, you're having your cake and eating it too" my rebuttal is always "so? If I have the cake I'm going to eat it."
Click to expand...
unless you were saying it as a dad-joke, it would smell of deflection from a mile away as you are clinging to a (wrongly) assumed illogical statement instead of responding to the argument at hand.

Also
In terms of an argument I'm not going to bring up a vague metaphor to declare fallacy, that's contradictory.
Click to expand...
Leaving aside the "vague" statement that I feel I already covered, I need receipts on this being a contradiction. It's, funnily enough, a False equivalence as the metaphor itself is just used to explain the argument, while the logical fallacy it describes would undermine your argument in a way deeper manner as it's not just a matter of form. If they used a logical fallacy of their own it would be contradictory, but being vague or inprecise in form (and not in content) is not a fallacy, it's at best not being good with words. But then again, I said that I would leave it aside, but I feel like it should be stressed that there's no vagueness there, because the meaning is well established. And to avoid looking as if I'm making a proof by assertion, I'll just point towards any of the many descriptions of that phrase that are easy to google.
 
AnathemicOne said:
No I don't again, is the following wrong?

"I can eat cake" = "I can have cake"

If not, then the correct reading would be "You can't have cake and eat it too" = "You can't eat cake and eat it too", its redundant.
Click to expand...

Sure, if you interpret it literally and equate "have" and "eat" (which I still think is strange), then yes--it doesn't make sense because you're interpreting it in a way that doesn't make sense.

But maybe this will put it in context. Are you familiar with the phrase "break a leg"? If interpreted word for word you are literally asking someone to break their own leg. That would not make sense at best and be rude at worst. But if you understand that it's a special saying in American-English you know that it actually means good luck. Which is what we are all trying to tell you--the cake idiom has a specific meaning/interpretation: that you can't use up something and still have the original thing. That correct interpretation is not illogical.
 
pixeldash said:
Sure, if you interpret it literally and equate "have" and "eat" (which I still think is strange), then yes--it doesn't make sense because you're interpreting it in a way that doesn't make sense.

But maybe this will put it in context. Are you familiar with the phrase "break a leg"? If interpreted word for word you are literally asking someone to break their own leg. That would not make sense at best and be rude at worst. But if you understand that it's a special saying in American-English you know that it actually means good luck. Which is what we are all trying to tell you--the cake idiom has a specific meaning/interpretation: that you can't use up something and still have the original thing. That correct interpretation is not illogical.
Click to expand...

Except "break a leg" isn't used as a logical fallacy declaration. "You can't have your cake and eat it too" is.
 
AnathemicOne said:
Except "break a leg" isn't used as a logical fallacy declaration. "You can't have your cake and eat it too" is.
Click to expand...

Maybe this will clear things up. OP, which of these two below are you actually disagreeing with? (1) That if you use something up you won't still possess that same object. (2) That the cake idiom by its own words can be interpreted to mean that if you use something up you won't still possess that same object.

If it's the first, I don't think we can help you. If it's the second, well then, you CAN argue that, but that's the thing about idioms and sayings, they don't have to make literal sense.
 
AnathemicOne said:
"I can eat cake" = "I can have cake"
Click to expand...
Yes this is wrong.
"I can have cake to eat" -> "I can eat cake to eat"

In this case the 'have' does mean 'eat' in the sense you are talking about, but you still can't just substitute the word 'eat' for 'have'. 'Having' food implies the eat part, it is just used so often that it is omitted.
 
"Everything happens for a reason" is one of the dumbest.

It's true in the trivial sense that that we live in a causal universe. It's false in the commonly intended sense that there's a greater purpose behind every event, or some built-in silver lining placed there by a benevolent spirit just for you, you special precious thing. It's downright offensive if you take ten seconds to think about rape survivors, parents who lost their kids, etc.

A lot of people burble this nonsense to comfort themselves and others. Too hard to face the reality that the universe isn't designed to cater to your needs and desires I guess.
 
SpaceWolf said:
"Don't feed them after midnight"

So, what, I can't feed them at 6am before I go to work? How about 9am? When's the cut-off point?!
Click to expand...

When someone says that, you can only feed them until midnight on that specific day. From then onwards, you can never feed them again.
 
Agree with OP, keep fighting the good fight.

I've brought it up in a similar thread:

Murkas said:
"Having your cake and eating it too"

Never understood this, why would you have cake if you're not going to eat it?
Click to expand...


Could just say "you can't have it both ways" and be done with it.
 
Roberto Larcos said:
'Common-or-garden' is one that has never made much of any sense to me, even as a native speaker and an English language tutor. It's very British - I don't think I've ever heard a non-Brit say it.
Click to expand...

It's from recipes and stuff. A common is like a big field for the whole village to use and a garden is a garden. So when the recipe says "common or garden basil leaf" it means "bro go outside this will either be growing in your garden or in the village common legit easy" and so 'common or garden' took on that meaning of ubiquitous and ordinary (especially compared to if you were asked for like fancy tuscan basil leaf. Special extra tasty food doesn't grow in your common or garden I guess.)

As a kid I always heard it as 'commoner garden' and assumed it meant stuff normal people could grow in their gardens because they were commoners and not aristocracy. I wasn't too far off I guess.
 
Wow, this is still going.

I hope mods don't give you the tag you're fishing for, OP.
Sure, you're dedicated, but for the sake of future post history searches, people should see you for the stubborn nincompoop that you're acting like.
 
VegiHam said:
It's from recipes and stuff. A common is like a big field for the whole village to use and a garden is a garden. So when the recipe says "common or garden basil leaf" it means "bro go outside this will either be growing in your garden or in the village common legit easy" and so 'common or garden' took on that meaning of ubiquitous and ordinary (especially compared to if you were asked for like fancy tuscan basil leaf. Special extra tasty food doesn't grow in your common or garden I guess.)

As a kid I always heard it as 'commoner garden' and assumed it meant stuff normal people could grow in their gardens because they were commoners and not aristocracy. I wasn't too far off I guess.
Click to expand...

It's because the common, uninteresting, unexceptional, unendangered varieties of plants and animals (typically the ones found in western Europe since that's where modern biological nomenclature was established) are often named "common" or "garden", e.g. garden snail, common toad, garden spider, common pigeon, common buzzard, garden warbler, common vole, common shrew. Hence it just means typical or not particularly notable.

Your definition could make sense, but lots of those species are called "common" because they're common - they're not found on commons. And in fact several were named by Carl Linnaeus, a Swede, who used the word "vanlig", which means ordinary.
 
NekoFever said:
It's because the common, uninteresting, unexceptional, unendangered varieties of plants and animals (typically the ones found in western Europe since that's where modern biological nomenclature was established) are often named "common" or "garden", e.g. garden snail, common toad, garden spider, common pigeon, common buzzard, garden warbler, common vole, common shrew. Hence it just means typical or not particularly notable.

Your definition could make sense, but lots of those species are called "common" because they're common - they're not found on commons. And in fact several were named by Carl Linnaeus, a Swede, who used the word "vanlig", which means ordinary.
Click to expand...

Huh, see I was going off this, which says:
The derivation of the phrase obviously does have something to do with gardening, or more precisely, agriculture. Its original meaning, as has already been said, relates to the type of plant, fruit or vegetable which is found frequently in gardens or on "commons". (Historically, "commons" were the large patches of grass or woodland that ancient rural villages designated as being for the use of the community as a whole.) If such a plant is found growing in "the common or garden" it is likely to be unexceptional because of its abundance. The phrase has since come to be applied to anything that is common or unexceptional. (I was going to say "run of the mill" but that would be opening a whole new bag of worms, to coin a phrase).
Click to expand...

That makes more sense to me than it just being an extension of things being named either 'common' x or 'garden' y; because it includes the whole phrase 'common or garden.' Incidentally, the OED has the first reference to 'common or garden' in 1657; fifty years before Carl Linnaeus was born.
 
VegiHam said:
Huh, see I was going off this, which says:

That makes more sense to me than it just being an extension of things being named either 'common' x or 'garden' y; because it includes the whole phrase 'common or garden.' Incidentally, the OED has the first reference to 'common or garden' in 1657; fifty years before Carl Linnaeus was born.
Click to expand...

Interesting. The agricultural origin makes sense since garden plants/crops and their wild equivalents are often very different. But I know from working in wildlife research that the "common" designation there comes from the rarity (or lack thereof) of the species, which is why I thought it made perfect sense there. Sounds like I've been working under another of those scenarios where an obscure idiom has two plausible-sounding origins!
 
"How long is a piece of string?"
This is usually used idiomatically as a response to an unanswerable question (and if used by tradespeople is a big warning sign you are about to get badly ripped off, accompanied with a teeth sucking noise - eg "How much are those repairs going to cost?" / "How long will my car need to be at the garage") but the literal meaning of the phrase should mean "exactly as long as you need it to be" because traditionally you had a ball of string, and would cut off the exact length needed as required.


M.Bluth said:
Wow, this is still going.

I hope mods don't give you the tag you're fishing for, OP.
Sure, you're dedicated, but for the sake of future post history searches, people should see you for the stubborn nincompoop that you're acting like.
Click to expand...

On the one hand, yes.
On the other, "I eat a tag for stubborn ignorance" linking this thread - caveat lector
 
OP, you are conflating "eat" and "have" and making this way too difficult sounding than it is.

"Have" here means the cake is in your possession. The cake is a work of art as well, it looks amazing and part of you doesn't want to spoil that beauty by cutting into it and eating it. Yet you also want to eat the cake, because it's from a renown baker and would be one of the best cakes you've ever eaten, if not THE best. However, that means you will no longer have the cake around to look at or to look forward to eating.

You can't have both. "You can't have your cake and eat it too." It's logically impossible to still have an unspoiled and beautiful cake before you, and to also eat it, at the exact same time. It's a contradiction. That's what the idiom means.
 
You won’t find love until you love yourself


Wish people would stop parroting this, stop planting the idea that we are unworthy of love due to our issues and challenges in life.
 
AnathemicOne said:
Honestly just change the idiom to "You can't have cake and have it still" or "You can't possess the cake after you've eaten it." Having "have" before "eat" doesn't make sense because you need to have the thing in order to eat it.
Click to expand...

BRUH

Words are interpreted differently based on context. The context has proven to be sufficient for everyone else to understand it.

"Have" can mean "eat," but it does not mean it that way here.

Two states:

1) you "have" (equivalent to "own" here) a cake
2) you have eaten the cake
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

kids talk stupid
2
59
2K
touchfuzzy replied
Rampage Jacksons stupid ass son nearly kills a wrestler
7 8 9 10 11
515
2K
GateofD replied
What are some examples of 2 main characters from a show that never crossed paths.
Opinion 
18
2K
jason10mm replied
Examples of very good animation
46
5K
Musashipan replied
Romero's Queens of the Dead
7
132
Sticks replied
Top Bottom