🍷 Toast (honor)

A toast is a short speech and the raising of a glass in honour of someone or something: in honour of health, a celebration, guests. After the words people clink glasses or just raise them and drink. The custom exists in almost every culture, and wine is the most frequent drink for toasts.

The word “toast” comes from English. By one account it comes from the custom of putting a piece of toasted bread in wine. Later the word came to mean the wish spoken over the glass itself. Other languages say “prosit” in German, “cin” in Italian, “santé” in French and “na zdorovye” in Slavic languages.

In Georgia toasts are a special tradition. At the table the feast is led by the tamada, who gives toasts in order, each leading to the next. Long toasts are made to family, friends, the homeland and the departed. People usually drink a little at a time, not in one go.

A toast is linked to wine because wine is the traditional drink of celebration. But a toast can be raised with a non-alcoholic drink too. Alcohol is for adults only.

Toasting once had fierce enemies. William Prynne attacked it in his 1628 book Health's Sicknesse, and Massachusetts banned it in 1634. Its roots are older: historians trace it to the Greek libation, pouring out part of a drink for the gods, and in the 1st century BCE the Roman Senate decreed that Emperor Augustus's health be drunk at every meal. By the 18th century the word toast meant the person honoured.