Also 5 taddepol, tadpolle, tadpal, 7 tod-, toad-pole, toad-poll. [f. ME. tāde, tadde, TOAD + (app.) POLL sb.1, head, roundhead. The latter element has been questioned, on the ground of the apparent inappropriateness of the name ‘toad-head’; but cf. the dialectal synonym pollhead or polehead (in Sc. and north. Eng. powheia), app. = head-head.]
1. The larva of a frog, toad, or other batrachian, from the time it leaves the egg until it loses its gills and tail. Chiefly applied in the early stage when the animal appears to consist simply of a round head with a tail.
14[?]. Voc., in Wr.-Wülcker, 569/7. Brucus, a taddepol.
c. 1475. Pict. Voc., ibid., 766/20. Hic lumbricus, a tadpolle.
1519. Horman, Vulg., 277 b. This water is full of tadpollys.
1598. Sylvester, Du Bartas, II. ii. III. Colonies, 411. After a sweltring Day, some sultry showr Doth in the Marshes heaps of Tadpals pour.
1605. Shaks., Lear, III. iv. 135. Poore Tom, that eates the swimming Frog, the Toad, the Todpole.
1681. Hickeringill, Char. Sham-Plotter, Wks. 1716, I. 212. A Sham-Plotter … is the Spawn of a Papist, as a Toad-Poll of a Toad.
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist., IV. 47. The egg, or little black globe which produces the tadpole.
1886. Ruskin, Præterita, I. ix. 293. Without so much water anywhere as … a tadpole could wag his tail in.
b. transf. and fig. (In quot. 1588, a black infant.)
1588. Shaks., Tit. A., IV. ii. 85. Ile broach the tadpole on my Rapiers poynt, Nurse giue it me, my sword shall soone dispatch it.
1881. Macm. Mag., XLIV. 475. Such pale tadpoles,… with listless ways, and few games.
fig. 1924. H. L. Mencken, Prejudices, Ser. IV. iii. 2. 65. A youth of seventeen who is not a poet is simply an ass: his development has been arrested even anterior to the stage of the intellectual tadpole.
2. Sometimes applied to the tailed larva of a tunicate, the swimming tail of which is afterwards dropped or absorbed.
1880. E. R. Lankester, Degeneration, 42. The egg of Phallusia gives rise to a tadpole.
1909. W. Hatchett Jackson, Lett. to Editor. The ascidian or tunicate tadpole.
3. A local name in U.S. of a water-fowl, the Hooded Merganser, Lophodytes cucullatus, apparently from the size of its head, or from the patch of white on its crest.
1891. in Cent. Dict.
4. attrib. and Comb., as tadpole form, state, etc.; tadpole-like adj.; tadpole fish, -hake, a ganoid fish of the North Atlantic, Raniceps raninus.
1682. Dryden, Medal, 304. Frogs and Toads and all the Tadpole Train.
1682. S. Pordage, Medal Rev., 30. The Tadpole-Priests, Shall lift above the Lords, their Priestly Crests.
1768. G. White, Selborne, xvii. Frogs are as yet in their tadpole state.
1832. Johnston, in Proc. Berw. Nat. Club, I. No. 1. 7. Of the tadpole fish [Raniceps trifurcatus, Flem.], I had the pleasure of exhibiting to you a living specimen.
1847. Carpenter, Zool., § 980. The young animal [ascidian] has … a large tadpole-like tail.
1856. Gosse, Marine Zool., II. 27. At first it has a tadpole-like form.
1896. H. G. Wells, Plattner Story, in New Review, XIV. April, 360. They were not walking, they were indeed limbless, and they had the appearance of human heads beneath which a tadpole-like body swung.
Hence (chiefly nonce-wds.) Tadpoledom, Tadpolehood, Tadpolism, the state of being a tadpole; also fig.; Tadpoleward adv. [see -WARD].
1863. Kingsley, Lett., 29 May, in Life (1879), II. 157. Little beggars an inch long, fresh from water and *tadpoledom.
1891. C. L. Morgan, Anim. Sk., 222. Little Froggies which have just emerged from *tadpole-hood.
1897. G. C. Bateman, Vivarium, 296. Many of the Batrachians, during a portion of their tadpolehood, are vegetable feeders.
1897. Voice (N. Y.), 8 April, 3/1. Degeneration is involution through self *tadpoleward.
1883. Baring-Gould, J. Herring, II. lix. 293. All previous existence would be tadpolism.
