toady

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a person who tries to please someone in order to gain a personal advantage

   Political parties are known to harbor toadies.

2. 2
   verb

   to try to gain favor by cringing or flattering

   The upstart politician is toadying around town, trying to make friends with powerful people.

Simplified etymology

Toady is an early 19th-century shortening of toad-eater. In the 17th century, a toad-eater was a quack's assistant who swallowed or pretended to swallow a supposedly poisonous toad to demonstrate the power of the quack's remedy; by the mid-18th century, the term had developed the figurative sense of a fawning flatterer.

From a shortening of toadeater + -y.

Topics

External links

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• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary