Toasted Slang

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Morgan from San Antonio.

Hello, Morgan.

How you doing?

So over the holiday, I had made a post on a international social media site about getting pleasantly toasted.

And apparently half the people that read my post thought I was talking about marijuana, and the other half understood that I was talking about alcohol.

And so I did a little bit of research.

European people understood I meant alcohol.

East Coast people understood it was alcohol.

And everybody on the West Coast thought I meant marijuana.

So I did a bit of research myself, and I thought toasted probably was related to, like, toasting alcohol.

That might be where it came from.

But I was a little interested in y’all’s feedback, possibly on what you think.

Toasting alcohol like raising a glass to someone?

Yeah, like standing up and toasting at a meal.

It’s a good theory.

I think it’s an accidental connection.

More likely it’s just because there are a zillion slang words that all have to do with some damage being done to the body.

And a lot of them also serve as slang for being killed or being injured, like to be wasted or to be stoned or to be blasted or to be zonked.

You’re bombed.

You’re bombed, yeah.

And so we have just so many of these that we’re probably up in the thousands of slang words for having some kind of intoxication.

What’s really interesting to me on this is I’m not surprised at all, by the way, that there’s some kind of regional division on this.

It’s that it mirrors so well the problem with the word stoned, although that one’s generational.

We’ve talked about this on the show before, where stoned for people, let’s say, 15 over could easily be used for having too much alcohol.

Whereas stone for people that say 40 and younger, there’s kind of a gray decade in there, mostly means high on marijuana.

And so it’s just kind of changed over time.

But in general, toasted still means intoxication.

It’s just what is your chemical, right?

I guess that makes sense.

Yeah.

Is your chemical going to be the stuff in marijuana?

Is your chemical going to be the stuff in your alcoholic drink?

There’s an earlier use of it that has to do with being executed on an electric chair, which is not common slang.

But yeah, so it’s definitely got some other slang uses there.

Yeah.

I want to throw in a third slang usage that started in probably the 90s and continued well up until today.

And it’s a toast that just means tired or extremely exhausted.

And so you’ve got a third use there.

But this is the thing about slang.

Slang is not as firmly fixed as what we might call standard English.

I’m trying to say standard with air quotes around it to suggest some doubt about what standard means.

But in general, the stuff we learn in schools or in our textbooks is firm.

You know, it’s exact or mostly exact about the stuff that we learn from our peers and the stuff we learn in the playground or the locker room.

That stuff is all over the place and it changes from day to day and year to year.

Makes sense, Morgan?

Yeah, I know that’s a lot of information and it all makes a lot of sense.

One thing I want to applaud is your field work.

I love the fact that you spent the time to figure out that there’s a West and East vision on this.

That’s pretty cool.

Yeah, so what are you going to tell them in 140 characters?

Well, it’s not Twitter, but no, I think I’ll probably go back and make another post about it and see what people say.

It’s a really involved community where you can communicate.

So I would be interested to go back and give them y’all’s feedback and possibly podcast to the show and see what they say.

There you go.

You put a link to our show on there.

I propose that you do kind of a survey and figure out where they’re from and which definition they’re using.

See if you can prove on a map that there is a geographical division on the meanings of this word.

That would be cool.

I’d also like to know their ages.

Yeah, ages too.

Why not?

We can totally do that.

Yes, it sounds like we’re going to have a follow-up.

Let us know, all right?

Sure.

Y’all have a wonderful day.

You too.

Take care now.

Thanks, Morgan.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I love it.

She comes with evidence and theories and a lot of fun.

That’s cool.

Exiccated goes back to a Greek word.

Ultimately, that means an arrow.

So the tox root there is the poison arrow.

Yeah.

You’re intaking toxins.

Pretty much.

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