toady

plural toadies

1. derogatoryA sycophant who flatters others to gain personal advantage, or an obsequious, servile lackey or minion.

   "Go on, Hiram, show 'em what you can do," urged Luke Fodick, who was a sort of toady to Hiram Shell, the school bully, if ever there was one.

   1912, Stratemeyer Syndicate, chapter 1, in Baseball Joe on the School Nine

   5 more examples

   "But who is she, can you tell me?" / "Some fair-skinned speculation of old Montreville's, I suppose, that she has got either to toady herself, or take in some of her black friends with.—Is it possible you have never heard of old Mother Montreville?"

   1827, [Walter Scott], chapter XI, in Chronicles of the Canongate; […], volume II (The Surgeon’s Daughter), Edinburgh: […] [Ballantyne and Co.] for Cadell and Co.; London: Simpkin and Marshall, →OCLC, pages 276–277

   Before I had been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that each of them pretended not to know that the others were toadies and humbugs: because the admission that he or she did know it, would have made him or her out to be a toady and a humbug.

   1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter XI, in Great Expectations […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, pages 168–169

   [T]he appearance of only three coaches, each drawn by four horses, was rather trying for poor Lady Scott. They contained Mrs Coutts – her future lord the Duke of St Albans – one of his Grace's sisters – a dame de compagnie (vulgarly styled a Toady)

   1901, John Gibson Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart, volume 1, page 569

   But how could she have helped herself? I asked, imagining the sneers and the laughter, the adulation of the toadies, the scepticism of the professional poet.

   1929 September, Virginia Woolf, chapter IV, in A Room of One’s Own, uniform edition, London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, […], published 1931 (April 1935 printing), →OCLC, page 90

   Come 20 January, [Donald] Trump and his toadies – including billionaires such as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy – will have total control over the executive branch of the United States government.

   2024 November 19, Robert Reich, “To protect US democracy from tyrants, we must protect the truly free press”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   Synonyms: adulator, apple polisher, arse-kisser, arse-licker, ass-kisser, ass-licker, bootlick, bootlicker

2. archaicA coarse, rustic woman.

present singular third person toadies · participle present toadying · participle past toadied · past toadied

1. intransitivetransitiveTo behave like a toady (toward someone).

   But bless your hearts, we "ain't so green," though lots of us of all sorts toady you enough certainly, and try to make you think so.

   1857, [Thomas Hughes], Tom Brown’s School Days. […], Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC

   2 more examples

   He had toadied to the late Mr William Morris: he had toadied to various members of the Fabian Society, he had toadied at first to the great Bransdon himself.

   1911, Daniel Chaucer [pseudonym; Ford Madox Ford], The Simple Life Limited

   I dared not do anything to spoil the image of me she had set up to adore. I had toadied to her when she was the awesome duenna of my darling, and a groveling something still persisted in my attitude toward her.

   1955 September 15, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, Paris: The Olympia Press […], →OCLC, page 85

   Synonyms: fawn, flannel, suck up, apple-polish, bootlick, bow and scrape, brown-nose, butter up

comparative more toady · superlative most toady

1. toadlike

   The bath is of greatest advantage in these chronic cases, with an earthy complexion and toady skin, if I am allowed thus to express its appearance.

   1874, Transactions, number 19, page 141

plural toadies

1. childishdiminutiveDiminutive of toad.