can't have nice things
- idiom
- Informal
:
no podemos tener cosas bonitas
- Every time he breaks something, my mother says we can't have nice things.
Now sadly, sadly folks, we can't have nice things anymore.
- Now sadly, sadly folks, we can't have nice things anymore.
- This is why we can't have nice things.
- But you know, see Lex why we can't have nice things?
Examples
-
Because of their constant mess-making, we can't have nice things in our home.
-
'Cause I can't have nice things.
-
Now sadly, sadly folks, we can't have nice things anymore.
-
When the kids spilled juice on the new couch, I sighed and said we can't have nice things.
Synonyms
Said when someone ruins something nice by being careless
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal meanings of 'can't' (cannot), 'have' (possess), 'nice' (pleasant) and 'things' make a basic sense ('unable to possess pleasant things') inferable, but the usual pragmatic reading — a reproach that good possessions or situations are repeatedly ruined by someone's behavior — is an extended, culturally used implication rather than a direct compositional meaning. This pragmatic/idiomatic extension would likely not be fully predictable to an average B1 learner who simply knows the constituent words.
Etymology
Can't have nice things comes from the image of someone buying something lovely and other people or pets quickly ruining it, so you can't have your nice things for long. That's why it means 'good things keep getting ruined because someone is careless or behaves badly'.
