[Ads-l] "cheers" v.

[Nancy Friedman]

Thanks for this, Jesse! I wrote about "cheers (v.)" in December 2020 and
noted that "cheers" became a substitute for "thanks" in the UK sometime in
the 1970s.
https://fritinancyblog.wordpress.com/2020/12/28/word-of-the-week-cheersing/

Nancy Friedman
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On Mon, Aug 3, 2026 at 8:16 AM Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com> wrote:

> I've been noticing _cheers_ as a verb, meaning 'to say "cheers" to; to
> toast', for a moderate but not extremely long time. Recently a
> correspondent asked me about this (in the context of observing anecdotally
> that _cheers!_ interjection seemed more common to him than other toasts),
> so did some casual searching. I was surprised to find it back to 1974,
> though that seems to be an isolated example until the early 2000s (which
> era is more reasonable to my own sense of this term). It's hard to search,
> though.
>
> Any thoughts, or evidence?
>
> 1974 F. Forsyth _The Dogs of War_ 49
> Manson nodded several times in approval, and brought the glasses over.
> They "Cheersed" each other and savoured the whisky.
>
> 2004 B. Biggs _In Moral Danger_ 218
> He sends a drink over.... When I start drinking his drink, he holds his
> glass up to "cheers" me.
>
> 2005 _Chicago Reader_ 7 Jan. 10
> Then she got up, grabbed Daniel's half-full mug, poured the beer into her
> empty one, cheersed us, and shuffled back to her seat.
>
> [...]
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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