toadeater (todester)

[ satisfy some writers, and fictions like that quoted from Brewer are invented to explain the word.] 1. A mountebank's boy who ate, or pretended to eat, toads (supposed to be poisonous), in order to give his master an opportunity to show his skill in expelling poison. Be the most scorn'd Jack-pudding of the pack, And turn toad - eater to some foreign quack. Tom Brown, Satire on an Ignorant Quack (Works, I. 71). [(N. and Q., 3d ser., I. 129.) 2. A fawning, obsequious parasite; a mean sycophant; a toady. Toad - eater . It is a metaphor taken from a mounte ... bank's boy's eating toads, in order to show 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 de pendence are forced to do the most nauseous things that can be thought on, to please and humour their patrons. Sarah Fielding , Adventures of David Simple (1744). I am retired hither like an old summer dowager; only that I have no toad - eater to take the air with me in the back part of my lozenge-coach, and to be scolded. Walpole , Letters, II. 52. toad. toadlet (tōd'let), n. [ Your shyne , and slyne , and pretending to know nothing never took me in, whatever you may do with others. I always knew you for a toadling . Johnson, in Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, I. 133. toad-lizard (tod'liz"ärd), n. A so-called horned frog or toad. See under toad . toad-orchis (tōd'or"kis), n. The West African orchid Megaclinium Bufo, the flowers of which resemble small toads and are arranged along the midrib of a green blade. The lip has a rapid spontaneous movement. toad-pipe (tōd'pīp), n. Any one of various species of Equisetum or horsetail. Also tad - pipe. toadrock (tōd'rok), n. Same as toadstone2. toad-rush (tod'rush), n. See rush1. At the final overthrow of the Moors, the Castilians made them their servants, and their active habits and officious manners greatly pleased the proud and lazy Spaniards, who called them mi todita (my factotum). Hence toad's-cap (tōdz'kap), n. Same as toadstool. a cringing, officious dependent, who will do all sorts of to ads eye (tōdz'i), n. [ Brewer , Phrase and Fable. toad-eating (tōd'ē"ting), п. Servile or sycophantic complaisance; sycophancy. Without the officiousne , the inquisitivene , the ef. frontery, the toad - eating, the insensibility to all reproof, he [Boswell] never could have produced so excellent a book. Macaulay, Boswell's Johnson.