Tag: Davies ‘of Hereford’

origin of the phrase ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it’

.Reading time 2 minutes.

The proverb you can’t have your cake and eat it (too) means you can’t enjoy both of two desirable but mutually exclusive alternatives. It made more sense in its early formulations, when the positions of have and eat had not been reversed. It is first recorded in A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of […]

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meaning and origin of the phrase ‘of mice and men’

.Reading time 9 minutes.

The words man and mouse have been used in alliterative association in: – neither man nor mouse, to mean not a living creature, great or small, – mouse and man, or mice and men, to mean every living thing. The first known user of neither man nor mouse was the poet and writing-master John Davies […]

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