toast

Note: The word toast in the sense "a person who is honored with a drink and wishes for good health or prosperity," with the accompanying verb "to propose or drink to (a person) as a toast," first appears in print at the very end of the seventeenth century. The conventional assumption is that the use is metaphorical, "the name of a lady being supposed to flavour a bumper like a spiced toast in the drink," as it is expressed in the Oxford English Dictionary, first edition. This is pure speculation, however, as the origin of the sense remains obscure. Two oft-quoted explanations appear in Richard steele's journal The Tatler, which appeared between April, 1709 and January, 1711. The first is in No. 24 (June 4, 1709), probably written by Joseph addison: "To know what a toast is in the country gives as much perplexity as she herself does in town: and indeed the learned differ very much upon the original of this word, and the acceptation of it among the moderns. … But many of the wits of the last age will assert that the word, in its present sense, was known among them in their youth, and had its rise from an accident in the town of Bath, in the reign of King Charles the Second. It happen'd, that on a publick day a celebrated beauty of those times was in the Cross Bath, and one of the croud of her admirers took a glass of the water in which the fair one stood, and drank her health to the company. There was in the place a gay fellow half fuddled who offered to jump in, and swore tho' he liked not the liquor, he would have the toast [alluding to a drink with toast dipped in it]. He was opposed in his resolution; yet this whim gave foundation to the present honour which is done to the lady we mention in our liquors, who has ever since been called a toast." Another allusion to an origin, in No. 31 (June 21, 1709) by Richard Steele, makes no mention of the earlier story: "Then, said he [a gentleman in the country unfamiliar with the word], why do you call live people toasts? I answered, that was a new name found out by the wits, to make a lady have the same effect as burridge [borage, used as a garnish or ingredient in cordials] in a glass, when a man is drinking." As both Addison and Steele were capable of mixing fact with invention, these anecdotes should probably not be taken too seriously.