Toasting with water
Toasting with water is unlucky in some old sayings, which held that a health drunk in water would harm the person toasted. Yet the very word toast has an English story in which the drink was water.
What it may mean
A toast is a wish spoken aloud with a glass in hand, and people have long argued about what the glass should hold. One old warning said that drinking someone's health in water would harm them. Yet an English story told in The Tatler places the birth of the word itself in water: at the baths in Bath, an admirer scooped up a glass of the water a famous beauty was bathing in and drank her health. True or not, the tale shows how the gesture outgrew its contents. People who skip alcohol (because they drive, are pregnant or simply prefer water) lift a glass anyway, and the wish is no smaller. Perhaps sincerity lives less in the drink than in the attention you give the person while you speak. Every table settles this its own way.
Depending on how you saw it
At a wedding when you do not drink
When the champagne goes around and your glass holds water, it is easy to feel you are joining in only halfway. Guests remember the speech and the eye contact, rarely the liquid. Where do you hold back from a shared moment because you think your part is not quite proper?
Someone stops you before you clink
Sometimes a friend or a relative pulls your water glass away and hands you something else to toast with. Old habits travel through families and often come from kindness. Whose small rule do you follow at their table out of respect, even if you would not keep it at yours?
A toast with an empty glass
Caught short when the speech begins, people raise an empty glass, which some find even less fitting than water. The gesture is there; the substance is missing. Which of your promises have you made with an empty glass, and could you fill it now?
Why it happens in nature
The custom of drinking healths goes back to Greek and Roman libations to the gods. In England the word toast came from the spiced, browned bread that was once dropped into ale, and the person whose health was drunk came to be called the toast of the company. A wish spoken while drinking was taken as a pledge, so what was in the cup came to feel important.
What folk beliefs say
England (Bath)
The Tatler, quoted by Brand, traced the word toast to Bath in the reign of Charles II: a man scooped up a glass of the water in which a celebrated beauty was bathing and drank her health to the company.
Source: John Brand; Henry Ellis (ed.), Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 2 (1849), vol. 2, p. 340. View the page
Ancient Greece and Rome
Brand traced the custom of drinking healths back to the Greeks and Romans, who poured out wine and drank it in honor of the gods at their meals.
Source: John Brand; Henry Ellis (ed.), Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 2 (1849), vol. 2, p. 338. View the page
To reflect on
What makes a wish feel sincere to you when someone lifts a glass in your honor?