toast

Pronunciation

• IPA: UK /təʊst/, US /toʊst/^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old French toster (“to roast, grill”),^[2][3][4] from Vulgar Latin *tostāre, a frequentative of Latin torrēre, to parch (past participle tostus; see thirst and torrid).^[2][3][4][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

To brown by heat: before 1398, in Trevisa's Bartholomew,^[2] the late 14th century in Etymonline; the NODE says it first meant to burn, as the sun does.^[3][6]

Semantic evolution

The noun, toasted bread, is from about 1400,^[2][3] first as something put into wine or ale.^[3] The drinking sense goes back to the late 17th century: a toast was first a beautiful or popular woman whose health was drunk, attested in 1700 in Congreve's Way of the World.^[2][3] Steele explained it in the Tatler (1709) with a story from Bath in the time of Charles II, where an admirer, declining the water a beauty stood in, wanted the toast instead,^[2][3] alluding to the spiced toast used to flavour drinks.^[2][5] The verb, to drink to someone's health, followed,^[7][8] and toaster as an electric appliance is first recorded in 1913.^[2] To be toast, to be finished or doomed, is slang by 1987.^[3][8]

Timeline

• before 1398 – to toast bread.^[2]
• c. 1400 – toast (noun).^[2][3]
• 1700 – a woman toasted; a toast (drink).^[2]
• 1913 – an electric toaster.^[2]
• 1987 – be toast (slang).^[3]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. Sliced bread browned by heat.
2. A call to drink in honour of someone or something, or the person honoured.
3. be toast (informal): to be finished or doomed.

Verb

1. To brown bread or other food by heat.
2. To warm oneself thoroughly, as before a fire.
3. To drink to the health or honour of.

Word family

• toastmistress
• toaster
• toastmaster
• retoast
• French toast
• milk toast

Related words

• torrent
• torrid
• thirst

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Pearsall, Judy, ed. (1998), The New Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
8. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins