I love Wine Wednesday on Twitter as it provides an opportunity to appreciate and promote our favorite wine lovers on our special social media day of the week making it more specific and exclusive from the more general, yet just as important and popular, Follow Friday. One thing that we online wine lovers like to do is end emails, wrap up videos and respond to favorable tweets with the word “Cheers!” No doubt, in your lifetime you have had occasion to witness or present a toast of some kind, whether it be at a wedding, a graduation party, or just an informal gathering with drinks. There must always be drinks, preferably alcoholic, involved when there is a toast. But, where did this term, Cheers, come from? Well, it seems the exact origin and derivation is not precisely known, but here are a few tidbits that may help us understand this particular term of honor.
Cheers! is considered a rather informal toast as opposed to a loyal (to a leader or country) or formal toast (longer prose and dedication) and is of British origin most likely in the early 1900′s. One may be able to derive or assume this a toast to be cheerful or happy and the word “cheer” has origins as far back as the 13th century where it referred to “the face” and was eventually extended further to mean mood and demeanor as reflected in the face. Could it also have come to mean that as drink (wine!) is consumed, eventually we will become of good cheer with blush face and cheer-ful demeanor? Of course, due to our historical ties to the British, it is easy to see why Americans would use this particular toast the most.
Other informal toasts that are considered synonyms in many countries across the globe include Prost, Skol, Salute/Salud (possibly derivations of “Salus” who was the goddess of health and prosperity in Roman mythology), and Chin Chin among many others including many listed here at Tulleeho.com.
So, be of good cheer and demeanor and I wish you health and prosperity or in a word…. Cheers!
That’s cool! I thought maybe it derived from the 80′s sitcom “Cheers” as maybe a saying that the wise Cliff came up with as a way of introductory greeting of Norm!
Cheers and Drink Happy
Josh @nectarwine on twitter
i haven’t checked my sources on this, but rumor has it that the clinking of the glasses was designed so that a little bit of each others’ drinks would spill into the toasters’ glasses. As it was popular in the Hamlet-era to poison wine, etc., this was a sign of good-will, showing that “no drinks had been poisoned, so it’s okay for us to mix them all together”
Josh, I knew I missed a good opportunity to reference only the best sticom of the entier 80′s! And Joe, I have heard the same thing about clinking glasses.