“Don’t be a cake!”

Nationality: American 

Age: 53

Occupation: Attorney

Residence: Boulder, CO

Collected Feb 27, 2025

Primary Language: English

Context:

“I don’t know the exact origin of this one in my life, but I think it was something I started as a dad. One of my main principles in raising you guys was making sure you could handle adversity, and so from a young age if I thought you could toughen your way through something, I’d often tell you to stop caking, or to stop being a cake. To be a “cake” was to be a weakling, and was a source of shame. Funny enough, you guys adopted it yourselves, calling each other “cakes” if you were perceived as being meek in the eyes of the other twin.”

Personal Analysis:

Growing up with this one, it was really funny to hear my dad mention it as folk speech in our family of four. I’ve admittedly never heard this used outside our little circle, but we would use this all the time growing up and still jokingly use it. My analysis is that it makes sense to use a plyable and relatively structurally weak item as a stand-in for when a person isn’t acting tough and use it as a nickname. This is in the same vein as now antiquated speech calling people “lilly-livered,” using a flower to demonstrate their weakness.