Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Servile or sycophantic complaisance; sycophancy.
- Pertaining to or characteristic of a toad-eater or sycophant; sycophantic.
Examples
“And I remember thinking, as I waited trembling for the order that would launch me after Lew towards the Light Brigade, where they sat at rest on the turf eight hundred feet below - this, I reflected bitterly, is what comes of hanging about pool halls and toad-eating Prince Albert.”
“Lonely for King, unimproved by the mineral-spring baths Charcot had prescribed, Hay found Cannes “a madness of toad-eating gaiety.””
“I put it down to natural toad-eating on his part, for I was the lion of the hour in those days, with my new knighthood and V.C., and all my Mutiny heroics to add to the fame I had undeservedly won in Crimea and Afghanistan.”
“After having hurried us by their cowardice and Southern toad-eating into this war; after urging it by their contemptible procrastination to its present tremendous proportions, they cry out”
“The prince extended his royal hand in token of amity; Ali-Ninpha declared me to be his "son;" while the long string of compliments and panegyrics he pronounced upon my personal qualities, moral virtues, and _wealth_, brought down a roar of grunts by way of applause from the toad-eating courtiers.”
“Without all the qualities which made him the jest and the torment of those among whom he lived, without the officiousness, the inquisitiveness, the effrontery, the toad-eating, the insensibility to all reproof, he never could have produced so excellent a book.”
“It used to be held, and perhaps still is held, by what may be styled the toad-eating school of publicists, that this governing temper was an hereditary gift transmitted by a long line of ancestors, who in their successive generations had possessed it, and had used it on a large scale in the governance of England.”
“At present no toad-eating is connected with the acceptance of hospitality, or, if occasionally a small "batrachian" is offered, it is so well disguised by an accomplished _chef_, and served on such exquisite old Dresden, that it slips down with very little effort.”
“The half is Caroline Salter, who is openly and honestly purse-proud, has no toad-eating in her nature, and straight - forwardly contemns high-blood and no money.”
“Page 221 remain and single-handed do battle with Cuffee, who, no longer forced to labor, and resorting again to toad-eating and cannibalism for the food necessary to sustain life, would in a few years reproduce on the shores of the New World a second Africa, all except the lions and elephants, the sandy deserts, and the anacondas.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘toad-eating’.
-
Gil Blas
Interesting words and usages from Smollett's 1749 translation of Lesage's L'Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane
reck, durance, rhodomontade, hangdog, trap, lustre, pin, boggle, dandle, birthday suit, colic, gripes and 238 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for toad-eating.
yarb This must be where the verb toady comes from. Toad-eating... toadying... No?! Oct 8, 2008
bilby Ufff, found it online too, Visiting TV show host eats cane toad. Oct 8, 2008
bilby Creepily, there was an article on page 3 of the local newspaper yesterday about toad-eating. Not the metaphorical kind :-( Oct 8, 2008
yarb More bonds and judgments against him than ever Job had, take my word for it! replied Ordonnez. Let him lick the spittle of his titled friends and patrons till his stomach heaves at the nauseating saliva; his printed dedications and his oral flattery, in spite of all the cringing and all the toad-eating, which constitute the stock-in-trade of his profession, with all the profits of his works, whether by subscription or ordinary publication, will not bring grist enough to his mill, to keep hunger from the door. Mind if what I say does not turn out to be true! He will come to the dogs at last.
- Lesage, The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, tr. Smollett, bk 10 ch. 1 Oct 8, 2008