Forms: α. 1 tádiʓe, tádie. β. 1–5 tadde, (pl. 1 -an, 2–4 -en, 3–7 -es). γ. ? 3, 4–6 north. tade, 5– Sc. taid, 9 north. dial. teäde, tead, ted, tyed. δ. 4–7 tode, 5–6 toode, 6 tood, 6–7 toade, 7– toad. [OE. tádiʓe, of unknown origin and unusual form, has no cognates in the other langs. (Da. and Norw. tudse are not connected.) The relation of tadde to tádiʓe, tádie is not clear: Biörkman thinks it a hypocoristic form with shortened vowel and doubled cons.; it survived in s.w. ME. tadde; cf. also tadpipe (see 7 b), tadpole. The northern tade, taid, teäde, ted, and midl. tôde, tood, toad, with long vowel and single cons., prob. represented tádiʓe, tádie, with its unusual ending reduced to -e.]
1. A tailless amphibian of the genus Bufo; primarily the common European species Bufo vulgaris; thence extended to many foreign species of the genus or of the family Bufonidæ. Running toad, the natterjack.
α. c. 1000. Ælfric, Voc., in Wr.-Wülcker, 122/11. Buffo, tadiʓe.
a. 1100. Voc., ibid., 321/23. Rubeta, tadie.
β. 11[?]. Voc., in Wr.-Wülcker, 544/7. (Ru)beta, tadde.
c. 1175. Lamb. Hom., 51. Þer wunieð in-ne … Blake tadden. Ibid., 53. Ah liggeð þer uppon, alse þe tadde deð in þere eorðe.
a. 1225. Ancr. R., 214. Schal ine helle iwurðen to him tadden & neddren.
1387. Trevisa, Higden (Rolls), VIII. 183. A womman þat hadde a fende wiþ inne her … caste up tweȝe blake taddes. Ibid. (1398), Barth. De P. R., XVI. lxxi. (Tollem. MS.), This stone is take oute of a tadde heed.
γ. a. 1300. Cursor M., 23227. Fell dragons and tades [v.r. tadis] bath.
a. 1340. Hampole, Psalter, xc. 13. Þe snake werpis and þe tade nuryssis þe eg, and þarof is broght forth þe basilyske.
c. 1440. York Myst., xi. 271. For tadys and frosshis we may not flitte.
c. 1440. Alphabet of Tales, 240. He drew oute a grete whik tade.
c. 1480. Henryson, Test. Cres., 578. Heir I beteiche my Corps and Carioun With Wormis and with Taidis to be rent.
1508. Kennedie, Flyting w. Dunbar, 287. Tigris, serpentis, and taidis will remane In Dumbar wallis.
1725. Ramsay, Gentle Sheph., II. ii. Mixt wi’ the venom of black taids and snakes.
1818. Scott, Br. Lamm., xxxv. A taid may sit on her coffin the day.
1823. Galt, Entail, II. xxix. 277. Ye would as soon think of likening a yird tead to a patrick.
1863. Robson, Bards Tyne, 353. Now, Geordy, my lad, sit as mute as a tyed.
δ. 12[?]. St. Patrick’s Purg., 274, in Horstm., Alteng. Leg. (1875), 188. Eddren furi vpen hem sete, and toden grete al so.
c. 1325. Song Mercy, 56, in E. E. P. (1862), 120. Þou seȝe me a monge todes blake Ful longe in harde prisoun lyng.
1370–80. XI Pains of Hell, 60, in O. E. Misc., 224. As Fissches þei were in þat flod þo, Todus, Neddres, Snakes mony mo.
1422. trans. Secreta Secret., Priv. Priv., 152. Thay hym yaue pryuely a lytill toode in a drynke.
1530. Palsgr., 281/2. Tode, crapault.
1567. Maplet, Gr. Forest, 16. Nesorpora is a stone of Pontus … found in a Todes heade.
1568. Grafton, Chron., II. 116. Findyng there a most venemous toade.
1600. Shaks., A. Y. L., II. i. 13. Sweet are the vses of aduersitie, Which like the toad, ougly and venemous, Weares yet a precious Iewell in his head.
1667. Milton, P. L., IV. 800. Him there they found Squat like a Toad, close at the eare of Eve.
1763. Churchill, Proph. Famine, Poems I. 112. Marking her noisome road With poison’s trail, here crawled the bloated Toad.
1849. T. Bell, Brit. Reptiles (ed. 2), 115. Few animals have ever suffered more undeserved persecution as the victims of an absurd and ignorant prejudice than the toad. Ibid., 126. Natter-jack Toad.
1895. Running Toad [see RUNNING ppl. a. 7 c].
1909. Blackw. Mag., April, 503/2. She was already on friendly terms with my mice and my toads and my snake.
b. As a type of anything hateful or loathsome.
a. 1548. Hall, Chron., Edw. IV., 231. To whom the Frenche nacion was more odious then a tode.
1585. Day, Eng. Secretary, II. (1625), 125. It behoueth also that … he doe incline to good … that he abhorre flatterie as a Toad.
1606. Shaks., Tr. & Cr., II. iii. 179. I do hate a proud man, as I hate the ingendring of Toades.
1645. Milton, Colast., Wks. 1851, IV. 360. To hate one another like a toad or poison.
e. In various figurative and proverbial uses. To eat (any one’s) toads, to be a mean dependant, to toady (see TOAD-EATER). Toad under a harrow, a simile for a person under constant persecution or oppression.
1649. Bp. Reynolds, Serm. Hosea, i. 46. [As] impossible … as for a Toad to spit Cordials.
1788. Ld. Bulkeley, in Dk. Buckhm., Crt. & Cabinets Geo. III. (1853), I. 364. There is no man who eats Pitt’s toads with such zeal, attention, and appetite.
1815. Hist. J. Decastro, etc., I. 252. [We] were e’en forced to eat our toads and be silent.
1855. Thackeray, Newcomes, liii. Don’t they follow him to college: and eat his toads through life?
1802–12. Bentham, Rat. of Evidence (1827), I. 385, note. Kept like toads under a harrow.
1825. Brockett, N. C. Words, Toad-under-a-Harrow, the comparative situation of a poor fellow, whose wife, not satisfied with the mere hen-pecking of her helpmate, takes care that all the world shall witness the indignities she puts upon him.
1903. Daily Chron., 16 May, 3/4. The ‘toad-under-the-harrow’ existence of a plain, middle-aged, but cultivated and fine-natured spinster, whose whole life was subordinated to an invalid and rather malignant old mother.
2. † Used erroneously for the frog (obs.); applied to other allied animals, as Surinam toad = PIPA; horned toad: see HORNED 2 b; midwife, obstetrical toad, the nurse-frog: see OBSTETRICAL.
a. 1300. E. E. Psalter lxxvii. 50 [lxxviii. 45]. And sent in am hundeflegh, and it ete þa; Tade [L. ranam], and it for-spilt þam swa.
1602. Marston, Antonio’s Rev., III. iii. Now croakes the toad.
1757–1894. [see PIPA].
1812–29, 1817. Surinam toad [see TOADLET, TOADLING].
1815. Kirby & Sp., Entomol. (1843), I. 305. Like the young of the Surinam Toad (Rana pipa) they attach themselves in clusters upon her back, belly, head, and even legs.
1901. P. Fountain, Deserts N. Amer., viii. 158. The ‘Californian toad’ which is really a species of lizard.
3. Applied opprobriously to human beings and animals.
a. 1568. Bannatyne Poems (Hunter. Cl.), 396/36. Ane fowle taid cairle.
1594. Shaks., Rich. III., IV. iv. 81. To helpe me curse That bottel’d Spider, that foule bunch-back’d Toad.
1605. 1st Pt. Ieronimo, II. v. Ier. Is not this a monstrous courtier? Hor. He is the court tode, fatber.
1634. Sir T. Herbert, Trav., 159. All true Persians thinke of them as enemies to Mabomet … and that all their Disciples were Toades, the of-scum of the earth & vile Apostates.
1731. Pennsylvania Gaz., 20 May, 2/1. To another [was given] the Poison and Rancour of a Toad; from whom sprang the Revengeful, who upon the least Touch of Offence, are ever upon the Watch to ruin the Inadvertent.
1744. in Ozel, Brantome’s Span. Rhodomontades (ed. 2), Advert. A cursed Toad of a Horse … not only threw me but rolled over me.
1771. Foote, Maid of B., III. Wks. 1799, II. 232. What a miserable poor toad is a husband, whose misfortunes not even death can relieve!
1853. R. Carmichael, in Whistle-binkie, Ser. III. 47. Sic a pridefu’ taid Our Tibbie’s grown.
1894. Astley, 50 Years Life, II. 87. The silly toad had carelessly forgotten to pull the stirrup-irons up.
4. = TOADY sb. 2.
1831. [see TOAD v.].
1834. Beckford, Italy, etc., II. 159. Mrs. Guildermeester … we found in a vast but dingy saloon, her toads squatting around her. Ibid. Donna Genuefa, the toad-passive in waiting … Miss Coster, the toad-active,… makes tea with decorum.
† 5. Alchemy. BUFO. Obs.
1471. Ripley, Comp. Alch., I. xx. in Ashm., Theat. Chem. Brit. (1652), 134. Our Tode of the Erth whych etyth hys fyll.
1610. B. Jonson, Alch., II. iii. Your toade, your crow, your dragon, and your panthar.
6. (Cookery.) Toad in a hole: see quots.
1787. Grose, Prov. Gloss., Pudding-Pye-Doll, the dish called toad-in-a-hole, meat boiled in a crust. Norf.
1797. Mme. D’Arblay, Lett., Dec. Mrs. Siddons and Sadler’s Wells seems … as illfitted as the dish they call a toad in a hole,… putting a noble sirloin or beef into a poor paltry batter-pudding.
1836. A. Fonblanque, Eng. under 7 Administr. (1837), III. 314. ‘Toad-in-the-hole,’ a piece of meat baked in a pudding, with a pool of gravy round it.
1883. F. B. Harrison, Little Pretty, iv. 36. I give you hashes, and toad-in-the-hole, and curry, and use up all the odds and ends.
7. attrib. and Comb.: attributive, as toad-hole, -poison, -pond, -spawn, -venom; objective, similative, etc., as toad-bellied, -blind, -green, -housing, -legged, -shaped, -skinned -spotted, -swollen adjs., toad-like adj. and adv., toadwise adv.
1633. Ford, ’Tis Pity, IV. iii. You *toad-bellied bitch!
1949. Cincinnati Enquirer, 9 Aug., 7/1. The way that gal gave St. Amant the poison eye, with her face a kind of *toad-belly white, I’d rather have seen her throw fits like the rest of them.
1850. Kelly, trans. Cambrensis Eversus, II. 217. Giraldus, who was *toad blind (talpa cæcior) to everything creditable to the Irish.
1890. Daily News, 27 Sept., 2/1. A *toad-green cloth redingote.
1825. J. Neal, Bro. Jonathan, I. 108. Never seed a wood-chuck in a *toad-hole I guess?
1598. E. Gilpin, Skial. (1878), 41. How *toad-housing sculs, and old swart bones. Are grac’d with painted toombs, and plated stones.
1843. Jrnl. R. Agric. Soc., IV. I. 190. The fact of wheat being broken down near the root, or *‘toad-legged.’
a. 1586. Sidney, Arcadia (1622), 126. A *tode-like retirednesse, and closenesse of minde.
1812. Religionism, 43. Then lay thy awkward, toad-like twists aside.
1839. Bailey, Festus, xxxiv. (1852), 550. My purpose … hath grown in me and lived on, Toad-like within a rock—vital where all Beside was death.
1869. Zoologist, Sept., 1832. The ignorant of all ages have believed in the existence of this *toad-poison, the men of science have almost universally treated its existence as a fable.
1851. Borrow, Lavengro, iv. (1911), 30. The sludge in the *toad-pond.
1894. Galveston Daily News, 26 Nov., 6/2. I’ve seen hundreds of both sorts of English women—the peach-skinned and the *toad-skinned.
1854. Badham, Halieut., 507. These last acquired such celebrity in the knowledge of wheedling, as to be called parasite, or *toad-spawn.
1605. Shaks., Lear, V. iii. 138. A most *Toad-spotted Traitor.
1603. H. Crosse, Vertues Commw. (1878), 82. So *toade-swolne with pride and ambition, that he is ready to burst in sunder.
1852. Zoologist, X. 3658. The active principle of *toad-venom is alkaline in its character.
1867. Lanier, Strange Jokes, 17. Give lair and rest To him who *toadwise sits and croaks.
b. Special comb.: toad-back a., of a stair-rail, etc., having a section of three-lobed shape held to resemble the back of a toad; toad-bit, a disease of cattle: see quot.; toad-bug, any species of the American genus Galgulus of small predaceous Hemiptera; toad-cheese († taddechese), a poisonous fungus; toad-flower, an African plant, Stapelia bufonia; toad-frog, a book-name for the genus Pelobates of tailless amphibians: see quot.; toad-grass = toad-rush; toad-head, the American golden plover (local U.S.); toad-lily, (a) Fritillaria pyrenaica; (b) the American white water-lily (local U.S.); (c) the Japanese Tricyrtis hirta; toad-lizard, (a) the horned toad (Cent. Dict., 1891); (b) the labyrinthodon; toad-marl, a dark-colored variety of marl; toad-orchis, a tropical West African orchid, Megaclinium Bufo, having purple-spotted flowers; toad-pipe († tadpipe), any one of various species of Equisetum; † toad-pool, a mass of corrupt poisonous matter; toad-rock = TOADSTONE2; toad-rush, Juncus bufonius; † toad’s bread, a fungus; toad’s cap, a toadstool; toad’s eye, a precious stone; ? = CRAPAUD 2; toad’s eye tin, a variety of cassiterite; † toad’s-guts, a term of abuse; † toad’s hat, a toadstool; toad’s meat, dial., toadstools; toad’s mouth, the snapdragon, Antirrhinum majus; toad-snatcher, the reed-bunting; toad-spit, -spittle = CUCKOO-SPIT2 1. See also TOAD-EATER, etc.
1825. Brockett, N. C. Words, *Toad-bit, a disease among cattle … imputed to the poison of toads.
1902. L. O. Howard, Insect Book, 281. The *Toad Bugs … [These] odd and ugly little insects … have been appropriately termed the ‘toad-shaped bugs.’ The short, broad body,… the projecting eyes,… the dull mottled colors, are toad-like.
14[?]. Voc., in Wr.-Wülcker, 585/21. Fungea … i. boletus … a ‘taddechese. Ibid., 618/4. Tubera, taddechese.
1703. J. Whiting, in C. Marshal, Sion’s Trav. (1704), b viij b. Several of which persecuting Justices soon after dyed with Eating of Tadcheese (alias Mushrooms).
1882. Science Gossip, 165/1. ‘Toad’s cheeses,’ rank fungi.
1884. Miller, Plant-n., 137/2. African *Toad-flower.
1896. Lydekker, New Nat. Hist., V. 283. The fifth family … comprises eight genera, which may be collectively termed *toad-frogs, since they come neither under the designation of toads or frogs.
1640. Parkinson, Theat. Bot., 1190. The Flemmings generally call [it] Padde grasse, that is, *Tode grasse.
1884. Miller, Plant-n., 137/2. *Toad-lily, Fritillaria nigra. Japanese Toad-lily, Tricyrtis hirta.
1899. Edin. Rev., April, 317. The Labyrinthodon, or monster *toad-lizard.
1764. Museum Rust., II. cx. 377. Called *road marle, from its resemblance in colour to that animal.
1578. Lyte, Dodoens, I. lxviii. 101. The small [horsetail] is called … in English smal Shauegrasse, and of some *Tadpipes.
1607. Chapman, Bussy d’Ambois, III. ii. 452. Thy gall Turns all thy blood to poison, which is cause Of that *toad-pool that … makes thee … rot as thou livest.
1776. Withering, Brit. Plants (1796), II. 348. [Juncus] bufonius … *Toad Rush. Wet Gravelly or sandy meadows and pastures.
1861. Miss Pratt, Flower. Pl., V. 297. Toad Rush … sometimes called Toad-grass.
1624. T. Scott, Lawfulnesse Netherl. Warre, 17. Therefore Philip gaue him fungos, or *Toads-bread to eate.
a. 1825. Forby, Voc. E. Anglia, *Toad’s-cap, a fungus.
1747. Dingley, in Phil. Trans., XLIV. 505. The *Toad’s-Eye, black.
1850. Ansted, Elem. Geol., Min., etc., § 490. Toad’s eye tin is the same variety [as wood tin] on a small scale.
1874. J. H. Collins, Metal Mining, 13. [In] Cornwall … valuable lumps of ‘wood-tin’ and ‘toad’s-eye’ tin have been built into hedges.
1634. S. R., Noble Soldier, IV. ii., in Bullen, O. P. (1882), I. 317. *Toads-guts,… doe you heare, Monsire?
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 495/2. *Todyshatte (or muscheron),… tuber.
1886. P. S. Robinson, Valley Teet. Trees, 134. The rustic calls [toadstools] *‘toad’s meat.’
1839. Phillips, in Sat. Mag., 18 May, 190/1. It has … received various names, as Dog’s Mouth,… *Toad’s Mouth, and Snap-Dragon.
1848. Zoologist, VI. 2290. The black-headed bunting … a *‘toad-snatcher.’
1885. Swainson, Provinc. Names Birds, 72. Reed Bunting … Toad snatcher.
1751. Warburton, Pope’s Wks., IV. 24, note. Those frothy excretions, called by the people *Toad spits, seen in summer-time hanging upon plants.
1658. J. Rowland, Moufet’s Theat. Ins., 909. [Nature] hath infected the Sage with *Toad-spittle.
