[Ads-l] "cheers" v.

[Ben Zimmer]

Here's an isolated early example of "cheersing" that may simply be a typo
for "cheering."

---
London Courier & Evening Gazette, Apr. 20, 1818, p. 2, col. 3 [British
Newspaper Archive]
His Royal Highness's health was drunk with long continued cheersing.
---

--bgz

On Mon, Aug 3, 2026 at 10:42 PM Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com> wrote:

> 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
>

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