LONDON — It may not surprise anyone who has observed binge-drinking in pub-culture Britain on a Saturday night, but researchers at the University of Cambridge have produced historical evidence to suggest that, if the size of wine glasses is any guide, the British capacity to imbibe has soared since 1700, especially in the past couple of decades.

The size of wine glasses in Britain, the research team found, has increased nearly sevenfold over 300 years, offering a cautionary tale about the amount of alcohol people consume, particularly around holidays like Christmas.

“As we approach the culturally legitimized deviancy of festive drinking,” the researchers said in an article published on Wednesday in the British Medical Journal, “we suggest that size does matter: Look at the wine glass in your hand.”

That is not the only social shift. Greater affluence has contributed to a trend toward wine-drinking — once the preserve of the rich — rather than the beer and spirits favored by the less well-off. “We cannot infer that the increase in glass size and the rise in wine consumption in England are causally linked,” the article said, but the size of wine glasses is “an area to investigate further in the context of population health.”