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 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;