toad
pronunciation
How to pronounce toad in British English:
UK [təʊd]
How to pronounce toad in American English:
US [toʊd]
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- Noun:
- any of various tailless stout-bodied amphibians with long hind limbs for leaping; semiaquatic and terrestrial species
Word Origin
- toad
- toad: [OE] Toad is a mystery word, with no known relatives in any other Indo-European language. Of its derivatives, toady [19] is short for the earlier toad eater ‘sycophant’ [17]. This originated in the dubious selling methods of itinerant quack doctors. They employed an assistant who pretended to eat a toad (toads were thought to be poisonous), so that the quack could appear to effect a miraculous cure with his medicine.The toad-eating assistant came to be a byword for ‘servility’ or ‘dependency’, and hence for ‘servile flattery’. Toadstools [14] were named for their stool-like shape, and also because of an association between poisonous fungi and the supposedly poisonous toad.
- toad (n.)
- c. 1300, from late Old English tadige, tadie, of unknown origin and according to OED with no known cognates outside English. Applied to loathsome persons from 1560s. Toad-strangler "heavy rain" is from 1919, U.S. Southern dialectal.
Example
- 1. Toad recognized the car and the people in it .
- 2. The third such event was followed by toad extinction .
- 3. But toad did not seem to get better .
- 4. Toad swam to the bank and climbed out .
- 5. At first toad couldn 't believe it .