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> Indeed, this used to be the most common form of the expression until the 1930s–1940s, when it was overtaken by the have-eat variant. — https://en.wikipedia.o

• yunruse 2y ago
  I wonder if this has some sort of preference for ablaut reduplication [0]? I don't have the vowel phonics off by hand, but "have your cake and eat it" seems to flow a little more smoothly than "eat your cake and have it". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduplication#English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduplication#English
  • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
    It sounds like reduplication is about individual words being repeated rather than a phrase. > In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word, part of that or the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The ablaut section also seems to suggest that "eat" should come before "have" anyway. > In ablaut reduplications, the first vowel is almost always a high vowel or front vowel (typically ɪ as in hit) and the reduplicated vowel is a low vowel or back vowel (typically æ as in cat or ɒ as in top). I suspect you feel that it flows more smoothly because it's more familiar. You have to stop a brain process that's become a bit automatic to say that phrase and instead say it slightly differently.