TOAST (Lat. tostus, scorched or roasted) is the name given to bread dried or scorched before the fire. So early as the 16th c. toasted bread formed a favorite addition to Eng lish drinks. Sack was drunk with toast, and so was punch. The practice of drinking healths, particularly that of an entertainer, is one so natural, so likely to spring up spon taneously, that it is impossible to say when it began. Certain it is, however, that it received an artificial development owing to the prevalence of convivial habits in the 17th century. Then it became the fashion to drink not to the health of entertainers only, but to that of each guest, Of absent friends, and more especially of the unmarried woman whose attractions were most generally acknowledged. It also became the custom to describe a woman whose health was so drunk as herself " a toast." In this sense, the application of the word is said to have had its origin in an incident which occurred at Bath, and which is recorded in the 24th number of the Rambler, in the following pas sage: "It happened that on a public day, a celebrated beauty of these times " (when it was the fashion for ladies to bathe publicly in elegant dresses made for the purpose) "was in the Cross Bath, and one of the crowd 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, though he liked not the liquor, he would have the toast" (making, of course, allusion to the custom of putting toast in punch). " He was opposed in his resolution; yet this whim gave foun dation to the present honor which is done to the lady we mention in our liquor, who has ever since been called a toast." Whatever may be the origin of the use of the word " toast " in this sense, we now apply it not only to any person, but to any sentiment mentioned with honor before drinking. The French have adopted the word " toast" from us; making it masculine when applied to a man or a sentiment, but feminine when applied to a woman.—See Chambers's Book of Days.