How to Say Cheers in French

You raise your glass, someone shouts Santé (sahn-tay), and you clink -- but if you don't look every single person at the table in the eye while you do it, French superstition says you're in for seven years of bad luck. Some versions of the story get a lot more specific than "bad luck." Either way, saying "cheers" in French turns out to carry more rules than the word itself, and getting them wrong is one of those small slips that visibly marks you as a tourist at a French table.

That's the thing about a toast: it's over in two seconds, which means there's no time to think about it once the glasses are in the air. If you've only ever learned santé as a vocabulary flashcard, you're missing the half of the custom that actually matters -- when to say it, who you make eye contact with, and the two or three other words French speakers reach for depending on the setting. This is exactly the kind of practical, everyday phrase that never comes up in a textbook chapter but comes up constantly at a dinner table, a wedding, or a bar.

Santé: The Word You Actually Need

Santé literally means "health," and shouting it while raising a glass is the direct equivalent of English "cheers" or the more formal "to your health." It's short, it works in every setting from a birthday dinner to a bar with strangers, and it's genuinely the only word most learners need to walk away with.

Key Phrases

• Santé ! (sahn-tay) -- Cheers! (short, casual, universal)
• À votre santé ! (ah voh-truh sahn-tay) -- To your health! (formal, or to a group)
• À ta santé ! (ah tah sahn-tay) -- To your health! (informal, one person)
• Tchin-tchin ! (cheen-cheen) -- Cheers! (playful, mimics the sound of glasses clinking)

[AUDIO: santé] [AUDIO: tchin-tchin]

Grammar Note

À votre santé and à ta santé follow the same tu/vous split that runs through the rest of French: ta for someone you'd address as tu (friends, family, people your age), votre for someone you'd address as vous (a boss, an elder, a stranger, or a whole table when you don't know everyone). Dropping straight to the bare Santé ! sidesteps the whole question, which is exactly why it's the default -- it's short enough that nobody notices you avoided the choice.

• Common mistake: saying à votre santé to one close friend. It's not wrong exactly, but it sounds oddly formal, like proposing a toast at a board meeting rather than clinking beers on a terrace.

Tchin-Tchin: The Playful Alternative

Tchin-tchin is the word you'll hear from friends more than from a waiter, and it's worth knowing because it sounds nothing like what an English speaker would guess for "cheers."

Tchin-tchin actually has nothing to do with French roots -- linguists trace it back to Chinese qǐng qǐng (please, please), picked up by sailors and traders in the 19th century and absorbed into French as a lighthearted toast. It has since drifted into English too, though far less commonly, which makes it one of the rare words that crossed the language barrier in both directions.

Use it with people you already know, not in a formal toast at someone's wedding -- it has the same register as saying "bottoms up" instead of "cheers" in English: fine among friends, a little odd from a podium.

The Eye Contact Rule

This is the part that actually trips people up, because it isn't a vocabulary problem at all -- it's a physical habit nobody warns you about before your first French dinner.

Cultural Note

In France, you're expected to look directly into the eyes of everyone you clink glasses with, not down at the glasses themselves. Skipping this is treated as genuinely bad luck by superstition -- the folk version says seven years of bad sex, though you'll also hear seven years of bad luck generally, depending on who's telling it and how polite the company is. Nobody actually believes it will ruin their decade, but the habit runs deep enough that French people will gently call it out if you break it, and at a table of eight or ten people, it means genuinely making the rounds, glass to glass, eye to eye, before anyone drinks.

The practical result: a French toast at a big table takes noticeably longer than the quick single clink common in English-speaking countries, because everyone is working their way around the group instead of just tapping the nearest glass.

What Not to Toast With

One more custom worth knowing before you're standing there holding the wrong drink: in France, you don't traditionally toast with water. It's a lingering superstition connected to old beliefs about wishing death on someone (water was historically associated with funeral rites), and while most younger French people won't bat an eye at it today, older relatives or a formal dinner host might. If you're not drinking alcohol, the safe move is to toast with anything else -- juice, soda, even an empty glass -- rather than a glass of water.

• Common mistake: crossing arms with a neighbor's glass to reach someone across the table. Reach around or wait your turn instead; crossed toasts are considered another small bit of bad luck at some tables.

Putting It to Use

Picture a dinner party in Lyon: ten people, ten glasses, and your host raising theirs and saying Santé, tout le monde ! (Cheers, everyone!). The right move isn't to clink the glass closest to you and move on -- it's to work your way around the table, meeting each person's eyes for a beat as your glasses touch, saying santé or just nodding as you go. It takes a full minute before anyone actually drinks, and that's normal.

If it's just you and one friend at a café ordering a pastis before dinner, it's simpler: raise your glass, say tchin-tchin or à ta santé, hold their eyes for that one clink, then drink.

Practice Exercises

• Fill in the blank: Someone hands you a glass at a party and says, "___!" (the one-word default toast)
• True or false: it's polite to look down at the glasses while clinking, not at the other person's eyes.
• Translate (formal, to a whole table): "To your health!"
• Which word for "cheers" comes from Chinese, not French: santé or tchin-tchin?
• Translate (informal, to one friend): "To your health!"

Answer Key

• Santé !
• False -- French toasting custom calls for eye contact with each person, not looking at the glasses.
• À votre santé !
• Tchin-tchin.
• À ta santé !

Raise Your Glass Right

• Santé ! is your all-purpose, always-safe French toast -- short, casual, and works in nearly any setting.
• À votre/ta santé lets you be more formal when the moment calls for it, following the same tu/vous split as the rest of French.
• The real custom isn't the word at all -- it's the eye contact. Skipping it is the one mistake French speakers will actually notice.

Next time you're raising a glass, you've got the word and the etiquette both covered. Head over to Vocabulary to drill more everyday phrases like this one, or try a round of Exercises to practice the tu/vous distinction that shows up here and everywhere else in French.