I’m going to have some friends over for a toast this weekend. I’m trying to find a name for the event. Is there a Latin equivalent for drinking a toast?
Or for a housewarming, for that matter? ( it’s not exactly a housewarming, but it’s sorta kinda- I thought of calling it Homo Domo Bibo but I’m sure that doesn’t work at all,)
Veni, vidi, vino!
Ask Sheldon Cooper.
Nunc est bibendum
the first words of Horace’s “Cleopatra Ode”.
Roughly “now is the time for drinking”.
Translation from here
http://www.proserpinacurius.freeservers.com/Papers/cleopatra_ode.htm
Thank Riemann! I owe you a bibere!
Also praebibo can get used in that sense (see for instancethis song, In Praebibo Mortis, usually translated as “A toast to Death”), although it’s usually a drink before, not a drink to as I understand it.
The prae- prefix connotes a bit more than “before” in a purely temporal sense. Praebibere would be to drink in anticipation of something, or to drink as a salutation or herald of something. So it could mean “toast”, provided what you toasting is an imminent event.
The Romans, of course, didn’t toast important events by drinking; they poured a drink on the ground (a “libation”) as an offering to honour, thank or intercede with a god or the gods generally. In the context of something like a housewarming, the Romans would definitely have performed a libation.
Propīnāre - “To drink to one’s health, to pledge one in something” takes the accusative of the thing drunk and the dative of the person in whose honor the drink is made. The noun form is propīnātiō.
Other choices to say during a toast, depending on the occasion, according to this cite of Latin quotes:
Interesting how “propina” survived as the standard Spanish word for a tip.
Nunc est bibendum
I never knew Latin, but it’s nice to know bibendum means "time to drink. I first read the word in a piece about the Michelin Tire Co… The familiar Michelin Man originated when they made bicycle tires, and his rings were narrower than today. His name in those days was Bibendum. Today, they just call him Bib.
Then I went looking for a pic, and the Wiki page has several, including Eileen Gray’s Bibendum Chair. Of course now I know a lot more about Bib than I did when I started this post.
Actually, it means “that which ought to be drunk” or “that which is for drinking”. It only acquires the sense of “the time for drinking” when paired with nunc (“now”).
Good point. Gotta check out those Mirandas, gotta love those Amandas.
Darn, I forgot the link for a post again, sorry:
And don’t forget to act on those agendas. Not to mention revering those reverends.
True! And those pandas must be ready!
Okay, maybe not…
I don’t think that’s a survival: survivals don’t have internal -p-. I can’t find a cite in English that doesn’t just glibly say “from the Latin,” but it has to be a learned borrowing from the medieval period or later. It seems to be found in Portuguese as well; this site says it’s a 17th century borrowing; for Spanish, from the 16th century according to here.
You’re right, it’s surely a late- or post-medieval learned borrowing. Good catch.
Well… the idiom is that you use the neuter of the gerund in the nominative with a stated or implied ‘est’ (or often reduced to merely an st or apostrophe-st) and it means what we might translate into English as ‘it is obligatory to…’ with the dative of the person or persons who bear the obligation (though this is more often implied than stated, in my experience). That is:
bibendum est - drinking is to be done (by us)
eundum est nōbīs - we gotta go
mīrandum’st - we must marvel
cēvendumst - we’re boned