Someone sent me an email with the following phrase. I was wondering if this is a known phrase.
I was just calculating your cake penalty.
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Maybe something to do with the game Portal?– JohnFxCommented Jun 19, 2011 at 18:15
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@JohnFX - Can't be. The cake is a lie.– MT_HeadCommented Jun 19, 2011 at 19:16
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Not true: bit.ly/m3oJuy– JohnFxCommented Jun 19, 2011 at 21:06
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3 Answers
No, it isn't. Ask your correspondent.
Cake penalties are used by emergency services in the UK. If you violate a work expectation (being late, being unprepared, making a safety mistake etc), you are expected to bring cakes for your coworkers. https://cakeoffencesact.uk/police/index.xhtml
Googling the phrase and filtering out unrelated occurances brings up enough hits to indicate that the phrase might have some very narrow currency—though I couldn't discern the actual meaning. There are a couple references to penalties involving various numbers of cakes. I also found the phrase mentioned in the context of tennis on one site.
Many of the hits I filtered out were similar to @kiamlaluno's find and refer to patty-cake or fairy-cake penalties in various sports which I took to mean undeserved or silly.
Cake can also be used to describe something as easy—a shortening of the idiom piece of cake.
Let us know if any of this helps and if you get an answer back from the person who wrote it.
answered Jun 19, 2011 at 14:31
