Chapter Cadmeans to Calamity of C by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Cake To take the cake. To carry off the prize. The reference is to the prize-cake to the person who succeeded best in a given competition. In Notes and Queries (Feb. 27th, 1892, p. 176) a correspondent of New York tells us of a “cake walk” by the Southern negroes. It consists of walking round the prize cake in pairs, and umpires decide which pair walk the most gracefully. In ancient Greece a cake was the award of the toper who held out the longest.
   In Ireland the best dancer in a dancing competition was rewarded, at one time, by a cake.

“A churn-dish stuck into the earth supported on its flat end a cake, which was to become the prize of the best dancer. ... At length the competitors yielded their claims to a young man ... who, taking the cake, placed it gallantly in the lap of a pretty girl to whom ... he was about to be married.”- Bartlett and Coyne: Scenery and Antiquities of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 64.

   You cannot eat your cake and have it too. You cannot spend your money and yet keep it. You cannot serve God and Mammon.
   Your cake [or my cake] is dough. All my swans are turned to geese. Occisa est res tua [or mea]. Mon affaire est manquée; my project has failed.

Cake ... Dough I wish my cake were dough again. I wish I had never married. Bellenden Ker says the proverb is a corruption of Ei w'hissche my keke was d'how en geen, which he says is tantamount to “Something whispers within me- repentance, would that my marriage were set aside.”

Cakes Land of Cakes. Scotland, famous for its oatmeal cakes.

“Land o' cakes and brither Scots.” Burns.

Calabash A drinking cup or waterholder; so called from the calabash nut of which it is made.

Calamanco Cat (A ). A tortoise-shell cat. Calamanco is a glossy woollen fabric, sometimes striped or variegated. It is the Spanish word Calamáco.

Calamity The beating down of standing corn by wind or storm. The word is derived from the Latin calamus (a stalk of corn). Hence, Cicero calls a storm Calamitosa tempestas (a corn-levelling tempest).

“Another ill accident is drought, and the spoiling of the corn; inasmuch as the word `calamity' was first derived from calamus (stalk), when the corn could not get out of the ear.”- Bacon.