1. One who eats toads; orig. the attendant of a charlatan, employed to eat or pretend to eat toads (held to be poisonous) to enable his master to exhibit his skill in expelling poison.
1629. J. Rous, Diary, 45. I inquired of him if William Utting, the toade-eater did not once keepe at Laxfield; he tould me yes, and said he had seene him eate a toade, nay two.
a. 1704. T. Brown, Sat. on Quack, Wks. 1730, I. 64. Be the most scorn’d Jack-pudding in the pack, And turn toad-eater to some foreign Quack.
1761. Lady S. Lennox, in Life & Lett. (1901), I. 53. Beckford, toad eater to the mountebank, as he has been not unaptly call’d.
2. fig. A fawning flatterer, parasite, sycophant; = TOADY sb. 2.
1742. H. Walpole, Lett., 7 July. Lord Edgcumbe’s [place] is destined to Harry Vane, Pulteney’s toad-eater.
1807–8. W. Irving, Salmag. (1824), 177. Encouraged by the shouts and acclamations of … toad-eaters.
1859. Green, Oxf. Stud., ii. § 1 (O.H.S.), 33. Shabbily-genteel toadeaters, ready at his call.
1876. Geo. Eliot, Dan. Der., III. xxv. The toad-eater the least liable to nausea, must be expected to have his susceptibilities.
b. A humble friend or dependant; spec. a female companion or attendant. contemptuous. Now rare.
1744. Fielding, David Simple, II. vii. I. 212. David begged an Explanation of what she meant by a Toad-Eater…. Cynthia replied,… It is a Metaphor taken from a Mountebank’s Boy’s eating Toads, in order to show his Master’s Skill in expelling Poison. It is built on a Supposition … that People who are … in a State of Dependance, are forced to do the most nauseous things that can be thought on, to please and humour their Patrons.
1746. H. Walpole, Lett. to Mann, 21 Aug. I am retired hither like an old summer dowager; only that I have no toad-eater to take the air with me.
1750. Coventry, Pompey Lit., I. v. (1785), 16/2. Such female companions, or more properly toad-eaters.
1808. Eleanor Sleath, Bristol Heiress, I. 139. Her … Ladyship’s confidential woman, or rather toad-eater, which is … the most fashionable phrase of the two.
1853. De Quincey, Autobiog. Sk., Wks. I. 351. Me it was clear that she viewed in the light of a humble friend, or what is known in fashionable life by the humiliating name of a ‘toad-eater.’
