toadeater

English

Alternative forms

toad-eater, toad eater

Etymology

From toad +‎ eater, said to allude to an old alleged practice among mountebanks, who would hire a boy to eat (or pretend to eat) toads, which many had considered poisonous. The toadeater (or "toady") would pretend to writhe in pain, until the quack gave him some "medicine", and then try to impress upon the crowd that the boy was cured. Compare toady.

Noun

toadeater (plural toadeaters)

A fawning, obsequious parasite; a mean sycophant or flatterer.
- 1819, J. Wilson, Complete Dictionary of Astrology "Horary Questions", Of Theft.
  a chaplain, tutor, toadeater, or some superior servant
- 1842 December – 1844 July, Charles Dickens, chapter 24, in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1844, →OCLC:
  You're too zealous a toadeater, and betray yourself.
- 1845, B[enjamin] Disraeli, chapter II, in Sybil; or The Two Nations. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, book III, page 19:
  Not that he was what is commonly called a Screw; that is to say he was not a mere screw; but he was acute and malicious; saw everybody's worth and position at a glance; could not bear to expend his choice wines and costly viands on hangers-on and toad-eaters, though at the same time no man encouraged and required hangers-on and toad-eaters more.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “toadeater”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)