Definition of "wassail" []

• A salutation or toast given in drinking someone's health or as an expression of goodwill at a festivity. (noun)
• The drink used in such toasting, commonly ale or wine spiced with roasted apples and sugar. (noun)
• A festivity characterized by much drinking. (noun)
• To drink to the health of; toast. (verb-transitive)
• To engage in or drink a wassail. (verb-intransitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The word wassail comes from the Anglo-Saxon greeting waes hael, which meant “be well.”"
• "He was apt to tell me when he had been sitting up all night, whether in study or what he called wassail; but I could always guess the fact from his appearance."
• "And each meeting meant a drink; and there was much to talk about; and more drinks; and songs to be sung; and pranks and antics to be performed, until the maggots of imagination began to crawl, and it all seemed great and wonderful to me, these lusty hard-bitten sea - rovers, of whom I made one, gathered in wassail on a coral strand."