toady
/ˈtoʊ.di/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.14 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A sycophant who flatters others to gain personal advantage, or an obsequious, servile lackey or minion.
Derogatory
adj
noun
Diminutive of toad.
Example Sentences
- ""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?""
- "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."
- "[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)"
- ""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."
- "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."
- "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."
Etymology
From a shortening of toadeater + -y.
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈtoʊ.di/
- British English: /ˈtəʊ.di/
Usage
Inflected Forms
toadies (plural)
toadies (present, singular)
toadying (participle, present)
toadied (participle, past)
toadied (past)
more toady (comparative)
most toady (superlative)