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.]
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, II. vii. TOAD-EATER … It is a metaphor taken from a mountebank’s boy who eats toads, in order to shew 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 dependance, are forced to do the most nauseous things that can be thought on, to please and humour their patrons.
1785. GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar 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.
1795. V. KNOX, The Spirit of Despotism, xx. The Herculean hand of a virtuous people can alone cleanse the Augean stable of a corrupted court formed of miscreant TOAD-EATERS like Lord Melcombe.
1802. COLMAN, The Poor Gentleman, ii. 2. Olla. [Aside.] 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, The 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.
