Phrases. 'She sits like a toad on a chopping block' (of a horsewoman with a bad seat); 'As much need of it as a toad of a side-pocket' = no need at all; 'As full of money as a toad is of feathers' = penniless (Grose); 'Like a toad under a harrow' = on the rack.
Toady, subs. (old).—A servile dependant;
a lickspittle (q.v.);
a bum-sucker (q.v.). Also
(Grose and Bee) toad-eater.
Hence as verb (or toad-eating) = to
do dirty or 'reptile' service,
to fawn, to lay it on thick (q.v.):
Fr. avaler des couleuvres. As adj.
(toadyish, hateful or ugly
as a toad) = repulsive, soapy
(q.v.), blandiloquent; toadyism
(or toad-eating) = servile adulation
or service, snobbery (q.v.),
tuft-hunting (q.v.), flunkeyism
(q.v.). [Smyth-Palmer:
Toady has perhaps nothing to do
with toad-eater . . . originally
to be toady, i.e. obliging,
officiously attentive: in prov.
Eng., toady = quiet, tractable,
friendly, a corruption of towardly,
the opposite of one who is froward,
stubborn, perverse: but see quots.
1744 and 1785.]
d.1572. Knox, Spirit of Despotism, 20. A corrupted court formed of miscreant toad-eaters.
c.1628. Feltham, Resolves, i. 13. Vice is of such a toady complexion that she naturally teaches the soul to hate her.
1742. Walpole, Letters, i. 186. Lord Edgcumbe's [place] . . . is destined to Harry Vane, Pulteney's toad-eater. Ibid., ii. 52. I am retired hither like an old summer dowager; only that I have no toad-eater to take the air with me . . . and to be scolded.
1744. Sarah Fielding, David Simple. Toad-eater . . . It is a metaphor taken from a mountebank's boy eating toads, in order to show his master's skill in expelling poison; it is built on a supposition that people who are so unhappy as to be in a state of dependence are forced to do the most nauseous things that can be thought on, to please and humour their patrons.
1785. Grose, Vulg. Tongue, s.v. Toad-eater. A poor female relation, and humble companion or reduced gentlewoman, in a great family, the standing butt, on whom all kinds of practical jokes are played off, and all ill-humours vented.
1802. Colman, Poor Gentleman, ii. 2. How these tabbies love to be toadied.
1843. Macaulay [Boswell's Johnson]. Without the officiousness, the inquisitiveness, the effrontery, the toad-eating, the insensibility to all reproof, he never could have produced so excellent a book.
1848. Thackeray, Book of Snobs, v. Boys are not all toadies in the morning of life . . . The tutors toadied him. The fellows in hall paid him great clumsy compliments. Ibid., iii. Toadyism, organized—base man-and-mammon worship, instituted by command of law: snobbishness, in a word.
d.1884. W. Phillips, Speeches, 135. What magic wand was it whose touch made the toadying servility of the land start up the real demon that it was?
2. (Scots).—A coarse peasant-woman.
Toadskin, subs. (American).—See
quot.
1867. Ludlow, Little Brother. 'Don't you know what a toadskin is?' said Billy, drawing a dingy five-cent stamp from his pocket. 'Here's one.'
Phrase. 'His purse is made of toad's skin' (of a covetous person: Ray).
Toad-sticker, subs. phr. (American).—A
sword [Bartlett:
'almost universal during the war'
(1861-5)].
Toast, subs. (old colloquial: now
recognised).—1. Originally, a
lady pledged in drinking; subsequently
(2) any person, cause, or
thing to which success is drunk;
