外国人喝酒之前为什么要碰杯？据说碰杯的仪式起源于确认杯中有无毒药，到底事实是怎样的呢？下面快来看看吧。

Q:为什么喝酒时要碰杯?

A: It used to be common for someone to try to kill an enemy by offering him a poisoned drink. To prove to a guest that a drink was safe, it became customary for a guest to pour a small amount of his drink into the glass of the host. Both men would drink it simultaneously. When a guest trusted his host, he would then just touch or clink the host's glass with his own.

Origins: Many explanations have been advanced to explain our custom of clinking glasses when participating in toasts. One is that early Europeans felt the sound helped to drive off evil spirits. Another holds that by clanking the glasses into one another, wine could be sloshed from glass to glass, thereby serving as a proof the beverages had not been poisoned. Yet another claim asserts that the "clink" served as a symbolic acknowledgment of trust among imbibers who did not feel the need to sample each others' drinks to prove them unadulterated.

A：过去常常有人认为在酒杯里放毒来谋杀敌人，为了证实酒是安全的，宾客会把杯中一部分酒倒进主人杯中已成为一种习俗，然后主宾同时喝下去以证明无毒。当宾客信认主人时，两人就只是碰一下杯子。

起源：喝酒碰杯的习俗有很多种解释。一种是早期欧洲人认为碰杯的声音可以驱逐恶灵。另一种解释坚持认为碰杯时双方各将自己的酒向对方的酒杯中倾注一些，从而证明酒中无毒。然而还有另一种则认为：碰杯是一种象征性的相信酒是干净的，不需证明有没有放毒。

Each of those explanations is false. While making a racket for the purpose of scaring off evil spirits underpins other customs that carry over to this day (e.g., the tolling of church bells at weddings, and the loud shouts and noisemaking at the stroke of twelve on New Year's Eve), the "clink" is a relatively new aspect of toasting and, as such, came along well after folks had relinquished the notion that demons both lurked in every corner of typical day-to-day existence and could be sped on their way by a bit of noise. As for sloshing wine from one glass to another, drinking vessels would need to be filled to the brim to effect that, and if they were, such practice would waste valuable potables (because some would be sure to land on the floor) and likely douse the toasters too. And while the poisoning of enemies has long been part of the ordinary mayhem of the world, the practice of touching of one's filled glass to those of others when participating in a toast is unrelated to suspicion of the wine's having been tampered with; such killings were not so common at any nebulous point in the past that a signal to one's host indicating he was clear of suspicion of attempted murder needed to be enshrined in the canon of social gestures.

以上那些观点都是错误的。虽然碰杯驱邪说法衍生出了很多习俗并沿用至今(例如婚礼上教堂的钟声、大声喊叫还有除夕夜正点的狂欢。)，但碰杯是祝酒中相对较新的一环，是人们不再相信恶灵存在于我们生活中的每个角落这一观念之后才产生的。其实人们只是为了要一些热闹而已。至于碰杯使酒从一方流到另一方，那么酒器是需要盛满酒的，如果盛满了，那这样就会浪费昂贵的饮料(因为肯定会有酒洒到地上去)还有可能泼到食物上。虽然毒死敌人世界上以前的确被用过，但喝酒时把酒倒进另一个人的酒杯里，无端地猜疑无辜的人是不合理的。更何况在过去这种杀人方式并不常用，因为这意味着主人的社会地位会因涉嫌企图谋杀而发生动摇。