YouTube / iTunes / Spotify / Radio Public / Pocket Casts / Google Podcasts / Breaker / Overcast
Listen to ArtisanEnglish.jp posts & lesson intros here.
Phrase: Take the cake
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Japan has had a plethora of PMs (Prime Ministers) while I’ve lived here, but Suga takes the cake.
So, what do I mean by that?
Of course, explaining the phrase is the point of this little post, and I hoped you would not know what it means.
Take the cake is used to describe something as the most remarkable, not in a good way, or most foolish of its kind.
Saying that PM Suga takes the cake is not a compliment.
We usually use this phrase when we can’t believe someone has done something.
Let’s say you are a basketball fan.
During a game, one of the players on your favourite team takes ten free throws and misses them all.
You and every other fan could say that takes the cake.
Of course, you would probably use much more colourful language than that, but you get my point.
When a native English speaker feels incredulous or refuses to accept that something is true because it’s so idiotic or stupid, you’ll hear us say it takes the cake.
Like or follow ArtisanEnglish.jp on social media.
Naturally, I did some research because I wondered why it’s ‘take the cake‘ and not something else.
What I discovered is that this, too, is probably an African-American term.
Remember ‘put your foot in it‘ from March 21st?
Apparently, they used to have cake-walks where couples would dress up and strut their stuff showing everyone their style.
Often the prize was a cake.
Therefore, whoever won the competition took the cake home.
They were the winners.
Since then, take the cake seems to have taken on a more sarcastic tone.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 76.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.