Takes The Cake Idiom. 3 Examples of Take the Cake. Its figurative use for something either excellent or outrageously bad dates from the 1880s.
To be very bad Home Search. Its figurative use for something either excellent or outrageously bad dates from the 1880s. To take the cake basically means to be the most outstanding example in some way whether negative or positive.
To have ones cake and eat it.
For example ABC takes the cake. That takes the cake. Usually used in the form I have seenheard a lot of variable but this takes the cake A common but aging phrase in Scandinavian languages. Or to be the worst or best of its kind.