Why do I need to know toast ?
Because this word has two very opposite meanings, and you’ll definitely want to be able to tell them apart.
What does it mean?
toast – roughly pronounced trahn-kay – is a regular French -ER verb and translates as ‘to toast’ in English, so you might hear this at dinner parties or restaurants.
However, you might use or hear this verb in very different contexts too. The slang or informal meaning of the word is to ‘suffer the unfortunate consequences of a wrong or harmful act.’
In English, you might say ‘to take the fall,’ ‘pay the consequences,’ or simply ‘to suffer.’
The original meaning of toast comes from the German word drinkwhich means ‘to drink.’ The tradition goes back at least to the Middle Ages, and maybe even to antiquity. According to French superstition, you should always look the person you are toasting in the eyes (or else suffer from bad luck).
It is not entirely clear where the other meaning of the word comes from, but it sure can be confusing for Anglophones. For example, the sentence “The parents drink, the children toast” might seem to say ‘The parents drink, the kids toast’ – while depending on the context this could be the case, it is more likely translated as “The parents drink, the children pay the consequence.”
The informal version of toast is widely used, even by news sites. An example from the French press was “Inflation: employees toast, companies hedge” – an article about how workers suffer the consequences of inflation as companies cover their own needs.
Use it like this
It’s the tenant who will drink if the landlord doesn’t fix the leaky pipe. – It is the tenant who will deal with the consequences if the landlord does not fix the leaky pipe.
She’s the one to blame for her husband’s poor financial decisions. – She pays the price for the poor financial decision of her husband.