You know you’ve been into one cup too many during this holiday season, when the Latin bria, “cup” leaves you inebriated. Refraining from that same cup, however, could also have sobered you up. All you had to do was remain so, “apart from” it.

Though too many cups can leave you out of your skull, a more accurate designation would be “in your skull,” there being a time when skulls and shells served as drinking cups, the Old Norse skal being the source of the popular toast. Skoal later became a popular expression among English speakers in 1589 when Scotland’s James VI’s marriage to a Danish princess provided the rationale for much drinking and toasting.

Skal is also the source of our scales, originally a pan or bowl hanging from each end of a beam, horizontally suspended at its center. So weigh your actions carefully, especially when it comes to drinking and driving. Those skals also are the scales of justice, one of its principal attributes being that you can never outweigh even a little right with any quantity of wrong.