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toast

nounverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//təʊst//
  • United States//toʊst//
  • Australia//təʉst//

Bread that has been toasted (cooked lightly by browning).

noun

  1. 1

    Bread that has been toasted (cooked lightly by browning).

    I ate a piece of toast for breakfast.

    This toast and marmalade tastes heavenly.

    Tea was a very special institution, revolving as it did around the ceremony and worship of Toast. In [public schools] where alcohol, tobacco and drugs were forbidden, it was essential that something should take their place as a powerful and public totem of virility and cool. Toast, for reasons lost in time, was the substance chosen.

  2. 2

    A proposed salutation (e.g. saying "cheers") while drinking alcohol.

    At the reception, there were many toasts from the well-wishers.

    The evening meal was "a repast of most recherché description," involving an endless series of toasts to almost everybody (with the notable exception of the other railway already serving Brentford, which came in for some hard knocks from various speakers).

  3. 3

    A person, group, or notable object to which a salutation with alcohol is made; a person or group held in similar esteem.

    He was the toast of high society.

    Josephine Baker did not become the toast of Paris by just shaking her booty for some theater gypsies as a party wound down.

  4. 4

    slangSomething that is irreparably damaged or used up, especially when destroyed by heat or fire; something which has been burnt to a crisp or incinerated.

    The metal frame survived the fire, but the plastic and rubber bits are toast.

  5. 5

    slangSomething that will be no more; something subject to impending destruction, harm or injury.

    to become/be toast

    If I ever get my hands on the guy that stole my wallet, he’s toast!

    You are going to be toast if you don't submit your school project on time.

    He [P. Hegseth] said the Iranian regime “are toast, and they know it, or at least soon enough, they will know it.”

  6. 6

    slangA type of extemporaneous narrative poem or rap.

  7. 7

    obsoleteAn old toast ("a lively fellow who drinks excessively").

  8. 8

    A transient, informational pop-up overlay, less interactive than a snackbar.

    With the new Windows Push Notification Service, you can remotely send notifications from a cloud-based web service. In Windows 8, the majority of the Toast messages are standard duration toasts.

  9. 9

    A piece of toast.

    Go, fetch me a quart of Sacke, put a toſt in't.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ters- Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Indo-European *tr̥stós Proto-Italic *torstos Latin tostus Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Indo-European *-h₂tiinflu. Proto-Italic *-ājō Proto-Italic *-āō Latin -ō Late Latin tostō Old French tosterbor. Middle English tostendeverb. Middle English tost English toast From Middle English tost, from the verb tosten (see below). Etymology 1 sense 3 is according to the Oxford English Dictionary a figurative application of etymology 1 sense 1 dating to 1674. It began as an epithet for a lady being supposed to flavour a bumper like a spiced toast placed in that drink. (In this context, a bumper is a drinking vessel filled to the brim.)

verb

  1. 1

    To cook lightly by browning by means of direct exposure to a fire or other heat source.

    We used to enjoy toasting marshmallows around the campfire.

  2. 2

    To cook lightly by browning under a grill or in a toaster; to grill.

    Top with cheese and toast under the grill for a few minutes.

  3. 3

    To engage in a salutation, often with raising of the drinking vessel, while drinking an alcoholic beverage in honor of someone or something.

    We toasted the happy couple many times over the course of the evening.

    You all have achieved so much together thus far, so I think that deserves a toast! Let's toast!

  4. 4

    To warm thoroughly.

    I toasted my feet by the fire.

  5. 5

    slangTo perform an extemporaneous narrative poem or rap.

    Toasting over a record does more than change the way that record is perceived by the audience: it creates a new piece of music with joint creative authorship, although the law does not support this characterization.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ters- Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Indo-European *tr̥stós Proto-Italic *torstos Latin tostus Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Indo-European *-h₂tiinflu. Proto-Italic *-ājō Proto-Italic *-āō Latin -ō Late Latin tostō Old French tosterbor. Middle English tosten English toast From Middle English tosten, from Old French toster (“to roast, grill”), from Late Latin tostō, -āre, frequentative of torreō (“to burn, grill”) from its perfect passive participle tostus (“grilled, burnt”).

Forms

plural
toasts
past tense
toasted
past participle
toasted
present participle
toasting
third person singular
toasts
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).