toady
English
Pronunciation
- Rhymes: -əʊdi
Etymology 1
Shortened from toadeater, + -y.
Noun
toady (plural toadies)
- A sycophant who flatters others to gain personal advantage or an obsequious lackey or minion
- 1929, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, Penguin Books, paperback edition, page 61
- But how could she have helped herself? I asked, imagining the sneers and the laughter, the adulation of the toadies, the scepticism of the professional poet.
- 1912, Stratemeyer Syndicate, chapter 1, in Baseball Joe on the School Nine:
- "Go on, Hiram, show 'em what you can do," urged Luke Fodick, who was a sort of toady to Hiram Shell, the school bully, if ever there was one.
- (Can we date this quote by Charles Dickens and provide title, author’s full name, and other details?)
- Before I had been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs.
- 1827, Walter Scott, The Surgeon's Daughter
- “But who is she, can you tell me?” “Some fair-skinned speculation of old Montreville's, I suppose, that she has got either to toady herself, or take in some of her black friends with.—Is it possible you have never heard of old Mother Montreville?”
- 1901, John Gibson Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart, Volume 1, p569
- ...the appearance of only three coaches, each drawn by four horses, was rather trying for poor Lady Scott. They contained Mrs Coutts — her future lord the Duke of St Albans — one of his Grace's sisters — a dame de compagnie (vulgarly styled a Toady)
- 1929, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, Penguin Books, paperback edition, page 61
- (archaic) A coarse, rustic woman.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Sir Walter Scott to this entry?)
Synonyms
- See also Thesaurus:sycophant
Derived terms
Translations
sycophant flattering others to gain personal advantage
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Verb
toady (third-person singular simple present toadies, present participle toadying, simple past and past participle toadied)
- (intransitive, construed with to) To behave like a toady (to someone).
Etymology 2
Adjective
toady (comparative more toady, superlative most toady)
- toadlike
- 1874, Transactions (issue 19, page 141)
- The bath is of greatest advantage in these chronic cases, with an earthy complexion and toady skin, if I am allowed thus to express its appearance.
- 1874, Transactions (issue 19, page 141)
Anagrams
Categories:
- Rhymes:English/əʊdi
- English terms suffixed with -y
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with quotations
- Requests for date/Charles Dickens
- English terms with archaic senses
- Requests for quotations/Sir Walter Scott
- English verbs
- English intransitive verbs
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- en:People