Toast

One story goes that at a health resort in Bath, England, sometime in the late 17th century during the reign of Charles II, a beautiful woman was in the water with a group of admirers hanging around, and one of them took a cup of the water she was in and drank to her health. Another man joked that he would rather have the woman than the water; "liked not the liquor, but would have the toast." This story may be apocryphal, but the word "toast" for either the drink or a woman who is being drunk to (as in "the toast of the town") appears in the Oxford English Dictionary around 1700.

Doing toasts in England at that time also involved some awkwardness if the person being toasted was present. Maureen Waller's 1700 quotes a French visitor as saying English custom had two requirements of the toastee:

1. The first is, that the person whose health is drunk, if an inferior or even equal, must remain still as a statue while the drinker is drinking...when you would drink a man's health, you should first keep your eye upon him for a moment, and give him time, if possible, to swallow his mouthful, that you may not reduce him to the perplexing and uneasy necessity of putting a sudden stop to his mill, and so sitting a good while with his mouth cramm'd with a huge load of victuals...
2. After which, the second grimace is to make him a low bow, to the great hazard of dipping your peruke in your sauce.

Sources:
Barr, Andrew. Drink: A Social History of America. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1999.
Waller, Maureen. 1700: Scenes from London Life. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000.
http://dictionary.oed.com
http://www.bartleby.com/81/16585.html
http://www.pineconeresearch.com/Newsletter/Archives/0012/nutshell.htm
http://www.eddiecampbellcomics.com/corner06.html

toad = T = toaster

toast 1. n.

Any completely inoperable system or component, esp. one that has just crashed and burned: "Uh, oh ... I think the serial board is toast." 2. vt. To cause a system to crash accidentally, especially in a manner that requires manual rebooting. "Rick just toasted the firewall machine again." Compare fried.

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toast

A health ; also a beautiful woman whose health is often drank by men. The origin of this term (as it is said) was this: a beautiful lady bathing in a cold bath, one of her admirers out of gallantry drank some of the water: whereupon another of her lovers observed, he never drank in the morning, but he would kiss the toast, and immediately saluted the lady.

The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.

Toast (?), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Toasted (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Toasting.] [OF. toster to roast, toast, fr. L. torrere, tostum, to parch, roast. See Torrid.]

1.

To dry and brown by the heat of a fire; as, to toast bread.

2.

To warm thoroughly; as, to toast the feet.

3.

To name when a health is proposed to be drunk; to drink to the health, or in honor, of; as, to toast a lady.

© Webster 1913.

Toast, n. [OF. toste, or tost'ee, toasted bread. See Toast, v.]

1.

Bread dried and browned before a fire, usually in slices; also, a kind of food prepared by putting slices of toasted bread into milk, gravy, etc.

My sober evening let the tankard bless, With toast embrowned, and fragrant nutmeg fraught. T. Warton.

2.

A lady in honor of whom persons or a company are invited to drink; -- so called because toasts were formerly put into the liquor, as a great delicacy.

It now came to the time of Mr. Jones to give a toast . . . who could not refrain from mentioning his dear Sophia. Fielding.

3.

Hence, any person, especially a person of distinction, in honor of whom a health is drunk; hence, also, anything so commemorated; a sentiment, as "The land we live in," "The day we celebrate," etc.

Toast rack, a small rack or stand for a table, having partitions for holding slices of dry toast.

© Webster 1913.