Toast : v. tr. "Toasting" is boire at the same time as someone, after having shocked the glasses (as a sign of wish, token of friendship, etc.). We had a drink together.
History: The origin of the custom of toasting glasses with glasses: Toasting by knocking glasses against each other is a custom that dates back to the Middle Ages.
At that time, poisoning was a relatively common practice at banquets between competing lords, nobles and other notables. Some thieves also used poisons to kill and steal the fortunes of wealthy people, everyone was suspicious of everyone, and poisoning killings were common.
Thus, the great lords took the habit of clinking glasses, ensuring that a little of the content of each glass ends up in the other, thus showing that the liquids were not poisoned. The tradition has continued, even if we now have more confidence in each other.
Toasting action: Toasting is the act of clinking your glass with that of a person you are about to drink with. The verb “toast” comes from the German trinken, which means “to drink”. When this moment is accompanied by a speech, we then use the expressions toast or raise a glass. It is then a question of formulating a wish, a wish, a commitment, an agreement or a tribute. This tradition dates back at least to the Middle Ages, even to antiquity. Superstition is that you look at the person you drink in the eye.
Toasting in Haute-Provence: "To ours" (implied: health)
Some sources trace this practice back to antiquity: “The custom of drinking to the 'health' of the living probably comes from the ancient rite of drinking in honor of the gods and the dead. During their meals, the Greeks and Romans poured libations to their gods, and during ceremonial banquets, they drank in their honor as well as that of the dead ”. “[Toasting] is probably a vestige of the sacrificial libations in which a sacred liquid was offered to the gods: blood or wine in exchange for a wish; prayer summed up in the words long life! or health ”.
Culinary journalist Marie-Claire Frédéric recalls that drinks from alcoholic fermentation can inhibit water contamination. "This is why the best way that men have found to make drinking water drinkable is to turn it into beer or wine, or to add a small amount of alcohol or vinegar to it to sanitize it. It is therefore no coincidence that it is by raising a glass of wine, and not water, that we pronounce the ritual formula: To your health! ".
According to writer Daniel Lacotte, anyone who does not drink suddenly becomes suspect of wanting to move away from the group: symbolically, he refuses to share. One hypothesis (not attested, not finding credit in any medieval writing) suggests that toasting in the Middle Ages made it possible to exchange a little of the beverage of the two glasses, and therefore to drink the contents without fear that your guest would poison it. . In the Middle Ages, toasting was indeed a sign of confidence. Toasting consisted of exchanging a little of your drink with the person you were drinking with. Toasting was done in two stages: one of the drinkers knocked his glass against that of the other while pouring a little of his drink into it, then the second knocked his glass against that of the first doing the same. At the time, glasses were actually mugs made of wood, metal or clay, much stronger than glass. This urban legend is taken up by various contemporary newspapers and writers.
Worldwide: This practice exists in almost every country in the world. Some people are sometimes even suspicious of someone who has not respected the tradition, behavior which can be explained by the origin of this practice.
In Europe, we usually toast with a glass of alcohol (beer, wine, cider, vodka, etc.), however we can do the same with a non-alcoholic glass.
Equivalents in some foreign languages:
German: "prosit" (prost). This term generally pronounced without the "i" (prost) is the conjugated form in the 3rd person singular in the active present subjunctive of the Latin verb prodesse (= to be useful) and therefore constitutes a wish, "that it may be useful". The expression was first used in student circles at the beginning of the XNUMXth century before passing into everyday language. The term prost is also used in an ironic sense mixed with fatalism, for example: “Der Krieg ist ausgebrochen? Na dann prost! "(" War is declared? Then there is the risk of toasting! ").
English: "Cheers".
Portuguese: “Saúde! "That is to say" Health! ".
Japanese: "Kanpaï" which literally means "to empty your glass" (in Japanese tchin tchin means "zizi").
Russian: The expression "Ваше здоровье" (vàche zdaròv'ye) means "Your health". The more polite form is “за ваше здоровье” (za cow zdaròv'ye) that is, “to your health. Note, however, that none of these expressions is used by the Russians. Ultimately "за здоровье", without specifying the health of which one speaks, but it remains very rare. The common practice is to raise your glass with a specific toast, more or less elaborate, and not to resort to a fixed formula. This practice is found, even more developed, among the peoples of the Caucasus.
Italian: "Salute", sometimes accompanied by "cent'anni", literally "one hundred years", meaning in this usage the expression "One hundred years of happiness and health".
Spanish: "Salud", or even sometimes "chin chin".
Chinese: "gānbēi", literally meaning "all the glass", either "cul-sec" in French, or "pèngbēi", meaning "toast"
Dutch: "proost" or "op je gezondheid" which is very close to the German Gesundheit, which means health, and is rather used in the address of someone who has just sneezed
Sláinte in Scotland and Ireland.
Vietnamese: "chúc sức khỏe" which means "good health" or "I wish you good health".
Turkish: "şerefe" which means in honor of.
Tchin-tchin: Origin: Tchin-tchin, pronounced [tʃin.tʃin], is a French expression used to toast, for example as an aperitif. “Tchin! Tchin! Symbolizes the sound of glasses.
Nowadays, we only knock the glasses together once, but we keep saying “tchin” twice.
We can also say "Tchin!" Tchin! »By clinking glasses in the American style, that is to say by raising the glass without knocking them together.
The Chinese expression qing qing (or tchin tchin, “please”) was used to invite someone to drink. Soldiers returning from the Chinese campaign introduced the expression to France.
According to the Computerized French Language Treasury, the expression comes from "tsing tsing", which means "hello" in Pidgin from the region of Canton, China.
Popular derivatives:
Tchin-Tchin is a 1962 play performed on Broadway starring Margaret Leighton and Anthony Quinn
Tchin tchin is a song by Richard Anthony to the music of Cheat Cheat by Chris Blackwell
Tchin tchin is a song by Hugues Aufray
Tchin-Chine is a song by Claude Nougaro
Tchin-Tchin santé is a song by Lara Bellerose
Tchin-Tchin Prosit is a quote from Claudy Faucan in Dikkenek.
See as well Toast under Mouth slang.
Quotation from the French writer Louis-Ferdinand Destouches, known as Céline (1894-1961): "Those who still had a penny, they bought a little bock together, the others pretended to toast, it created a coming and going bitterly cold days between the counter and the stream…” in the novel Guignol's band. (1951)