Wednesday 30 March 2011

Toady


A toady, or yes-man, does not get his name because he crawls around like a toad, or because he is despicable like a toad. Toady is short for toad-eater, and it was a job.

Once upon the seventeenth century the world was filled with mountebanks and quacks who would tour around trying to sell their snake-oil cure-alls. To sell, they needed to prove their potion's efficacy, and for that they needed a toad-eater.

Toads, as everybody knew, were poisonous. So the toad-eater's job was to eat one and collapse into a shivering, floccillating heap. The doctor would then give the toad-eater a dose of his patent medicine and, before the eyes of the crowd, the toad-eater would regain his health.

Obviously being a toad-eater was not a great job. Whether or not you actually ate your toad or only pretended to, it was a pretty humiliating way of making a living.

A toad-eater called William Utting is recorded in 1629, and the word was shortened to toady in 1828, by Disraeli.


P.S. I know this all sounds unlikely, but the OED says it's true.

3 comments:

  1. I remember reading a novel in which someone was described as a "tufthunting toad-eater".

    You've now inspired me to look up tufthunting, which apparently means "the practice of seeking after, and hanging on, noblemen, or persons of quality, especially in English universities".

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    1. What is the name of this novel featuring a tuft-hunting toad eater? I think I read it and it featured an earl's son refusing to eat treacle tart ?

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  2. Have just found it - a short story by Robert Graves called Treacle Tart, which I think was in an anthology of school stories I spent a lot of time reading as a child. Link here - http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zS3OLH5lCpkC&pg=PT136&lpg=PT136&dq=%22tuft-hunting+toad-eater%22&source=bl&ots=Qjl82QE47s&sig=_D9dL2fHNOvHXfoNJ6LLVNCw3iI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=3Ee3UJD5HKOr0QWGuoH4Dw&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA.

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