[Ads-l] "cheers" v.

[Jesse Sheidlower]

Thanks, Garson. Here's one that fills the gap on the other side, from ProQuest:

1999 S. Calder-Potts _Cool Ideas for a Hot Summer_ in _Irish Times_ 12 June 73 (electronic
ed.)
I was once invited to a steamboat rally on the river Cam near Cambridge. My host was chairman of the association and he welcomed me on board with a plastic tumbler of warm chardonnay. Just as we were cheersing, the chimney belched and we were covered in soot, some of which landed in the tumblers. We drank to the pleasures of steamboating.

[By "electronic ed.", I mean the ProQuest displays the raw text of this article, but not an image of a printed page.]

Jesse Sheidlower

On Mon, Aug 03, 2026 at 10:35:33PM -0400, ADSGarson O'Toole wrote:
> Here is an instance of "cheersed" with the right sense that appeared
> in the gap between 1974 and the 2000s. There are a few matches in the
> Internet Archive database for "cheersing" before 1974, but I do not
> think they have the right meaning.
> 
> Date: 1984
> Book Title: The Treasure of Mahasa-in
> Author: David Creed
> Chapter 6
> Quote Page 47
> Publisher: Robert Hale, London
> https://archive.org/details/treasureofmahasa0000cree/page/46/mode/2up?q=cheersed
> 
> [Begin excerpt]
> She came to take her fresh drink from him, she said, "you love this
> country, don't you, Barnes?"
> 
> "Yes," he said quietly—with a touch of surprise because it was a truth
> which he hadn't really admitted to himself before—"Yes, in many ways I
> think I do."
> 
> She cheersed him, and then went off again, through the archway into
> the dining-room where apart from the usual furniture, there was also
> the desk at which he worked when he worked at home.
> [End excerpt]
> 
> Garson
> 
> On Mon, Aug 3, 2026 at 11:16 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
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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