“Well, that takes the cake!” This statement, said with different intonations in two different contexts, can be interpreted as either high praise or derision. How can the exact same words convey such disparate meanings with only a shift in tone?
“It takes the cake” can mean something is ranked first — or something is foolish or annoying. Let’s take a look at how this idiom has been used over the decades.
The earliest recorded use is from 1839, when a Lexington, Mississippi, newspaper alluded to cakes being offered as prizes at a fair: “We have been shown some [cotton bolls] that we thought hard to beat, yet this takes the cakes.”
That usage seems to be literal, but less than a decade later, the phrase was being used metaphorically, still referencing a prize. In 1846, an account of a horse race reported, “The winning horse take [sic] the cakes.”
The wording “takes the cake” expanded in meaning over the next few decades to refer to skill, not just winning prizes. This usage is seen in an 1886 article in the Pall Mall Gazette, a London-based newspaper: “As a purveyor of light literature, Mr. Norris takes the cake.”
As early as 1900, however, “takes the cake” acquired negative connotations. Read these next examples with a derisive tone, as opposed to the complimentary examples above. In Sister Carrie, published in 1900, Theodore Dreiser wrote: “Pack up and pull out, eh? You take the cake.” And in her 1938 book A Blunt Instrument, British author Georgette Heyer wrote: “I’ve met some kill-joys in my time, but you fairly take the cake.” This shift evolved out of the positive prize-winning, skillful sense being used ironically in negative contexts.
As you see, “takes the cake” can refer either to something remarkably excellent, or to something outstandingly negative. Either way, it’s something extraordinary.
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