You know when you have those language takes that you’re so sure you’re right about that you start quietly judging people for getting it “wrong” even though no one seems to agree with you?
Just me?
Okay, so anyway, the interpretation of “to have one’s cake and eat it too,” right?
There are two common levels of this phrase: first, the common confusion wherein you might ask, “But if I am in possession of the cake, why can’t I eat it?” This is level one.
Then there’s level two, which garners a number of people saying, “Ohhhh, THAT’S what it means!” in which the interpretation is “You cannot continue to possess ("have”) your cake having already eaten it.“ This is a fine interpretation, I suppose, and stays within the bounds of the words’ definitions.
But it’s wrong. Or at least, it loses something that exists only in the phrase’s Final Form.
The correct interpretation—and surely it must be correct, for it’s too elegant not to be—relies on the definition of the word "have” seen in “I’m going to have a sandwich.” It means “to eat/consume.” In this meaning, the phrase would come to mean, “You cannot [consume] your cake and eat it, too,” but then relies on a subtle jab at that equivocation on the word “to have,” to actually say, “You can’t double-dip the rewards via subtle manipulation of the narrative; the reward is finite.”
It’s a rhetorical callout of smarmy equivocation, and it coffees my pot to no end that everybody seems to just fall for the equivocation.
