Definition of "toast"

Tea was a very special institution, revolving as it did around the ceremony and worship of Toast. In [public schools] where alcohol, tobacco and drugs were forbidden, it was essential that something should take their place as a powerful and public totem of virility and cool. Toast, for reasons lost in time, was the substance chosen.

1991, Stephen Fry, The Liar, page 23

Josephine Baker did not become the toast of Paris by just shaking her booty for some theater gypsies as a party wound down.

2014 May 28, John McWhorter, “Saint Maya”, in The New Republic‎

This chick is toast!The original line was: "I'm gonna turn this guy into toast."

1984, Ghostbusters, spoken by Peter Venkman (Bill Murray)

With the new Windows Push Notification Service, you can remotely send notifications from a cloud-based web service. In Windows 8, the majority of the Toast messages are standard duration toasts.

2012, Nick Lecrenski, Doug Holland, Allen Sanders, Professional Windows 8 Programming

Go, fetch me a quart of Sacke, put a toſt in't.

c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene v], page 52, column 1

Toasting over a record does more than change the way that record is perceived by the audience: it creates a new piece of music with joint creative authorship, although the law does not support this characterization.

2014, Richard James Burgess, The History of Music Production, Oxford University Press, page 168