have someone on toast
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To have a great advantage over someone
Literally: to serve someone on toast
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
‘ When I said I was working with Michael Crawford, they said he would be a monster, eat me for breakfast, have me on toast and upstage me totally.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “have someone on toast” mean?
To have a great advantage over someone Literally: to serve someone on toast
Is “have someone on toast” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.