plus, win, wi
Wassail
Definition
noun
1. An old English toast used when drinking the health of a person. The traditional reply is drink-hail.
2. A hot drink made from hot mulled cider, wine, or ale, plus spices, and (often) baked apples. It’s traditionally served in a large bowl at Christmas and Twelfth night.
3. Riotus drinking; revelry
4. To drink to fruit trees, cattle, and the like in wassail, in order to ensure they thrive in the new year.
The carolers were thanked with a drink of warm wassail at half their stops this year.
Word Origin and usage
Derived from the Old Norse toast ves heill (be well), wassail was used as a toast since the twelfth century and came to mean the drink, itself, as early as the fourteenth century. Also in the fourteenth century, the verb wassail became associated with indulgence in drink. The association with caroling came later. Shakespeare’s use of “Keep wassel” in Hamlet is the first recorded use in the sense of carousal or revelling.
Wassailing came to refer to the activity of going from house to house at Christmas singing carols and drinking wassail.
In parts of England, people still worship Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit trees, through the custom of wassailing, which is intended to encourage a good crop of apples.