On 9/25/07, Suresh Ramasubramanian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Charles Haynes [Tuesday, September 25, 2007 8:00 AM]: > > > > On 9/20/07, Indrajit Gupta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > a general tendency to toad-eat the British > > > > toad-eat? That's a new one to me. Where did it come from? Is it a > > mondegreen for "toady?" > > Yup.
Interesting. This caused me to look up the etymology of "toady" (in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition. IMO the best dictionary for etymologies available. It's free online at http://bartleby.com/61 if you care.) Turns out that "toady" probably comes from the noun "toadeater." So Indrajit's usage was correct, or at the very least not incorrect. I learned something. It's a good day. -- Charles WORD HISTORY: The earliest recorded sense (around 1690) of toady is "a little or young toad," but this has nothing to do with the modern usage of the word. The modern sense has rather to do with the practice of certain quacks or charlatans who claimed that they could draw out poisons. Toads were thought to be poisonous, so these charlatans would have an attendant eat or pretend to eat a toad and then claim to extract the poison from the attendant. Since eating a toad is an unpleasant job, these attendants came to epitomize the type of person who would do anything for a superior, and toadeater (first recorded 1629) became the name for a flattering, fawning parasite. Toadeater and the verb derived from it, toadeat, influenced the sense of the noun and verb toad and the noun toady, so that both nouns could mean "sycophant" and the verb toady could mean "to act like a toady to someone."
