All You Should Read

Why do Americans call the main course “entree“? And why do they call the entrée the appetizer?

Hell, even Gordon Ramsay is saying it now (and he (like me) is a Yuropian)!

It’s especially funny/ironic considering the fact that:

1. Entrée is a French word
2. Americans shun the French whenever they can
3. The French language is king in the world of food in the US

Here’s how it’s supposed to be:

The appetizer is a drink you get either before you’re seated, or before your entrée is served.

The entrée is the dish meant to fire up your appetite (or to fill you up before you get to the rest of your dinner…) - usually soup, or a couple of little (warm or cold) snacks.

The main course is your actual dinner, and can consist of either one dish/plate or a sequence of ‘em.

Dessert comes after the main course (at least you have this one right).

After dinner is when you get coffee and a mint.

Mmmkay?

People…

Saying Can’t have your cake and eat it, too doesn’t make sense.

Seriously, it doesn’t.

If you consider the verb “to have” to mean “to eat”, you’re basically saying you can’t eat your cake and eat it, too.

Which would amount to… what? Not being able to eat what you’re already eating?

If you consider the verb “to have” to mean “to possess”, you’re saying that you can’t eat what’s rightfully yours to begin with. These days, this is how people use the phrase: saying that you can have one thing, but not the other (even if the other would — logically — follow the one. And while this (in a way) does seem to sort of make sense… it isn’t correct.

The proper phrase is you can’t eat your cake and have it, too, where “to have” indicates “to possess”; it was meant to indicate that what you use up will not be there anymore when you’re done with it.

More generally speaking: you can’t always have things both ways.