Forms: see TOAD and STOOL. [f. TOAD sb. + STOOL, a fanciful name; cf. Sc. paddo stool.]
A fungus having a round disk-like top and a slender stalk, a mushroom.
α. 1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XVI. xxxi. (Tollem. MS.). It setteþ drye tadstoles a fyre.
1483. Cath. Angl., 377/1. A Tade stole, boletus, fungus.
1578. Lyte, Dodoens, 261. Them that are sicke with eating of venimous Tadstooles or Mousheroms.
1594. T. B., La Primaud. Fr. Acad., II. 97. Soft & like to the substance of a tad-stoole.
1601. Bp. W. Barlow, Serm. Paules Crosse, 50. Like the growth of a Tadstoole … a night’s conceit, but vanished in the morning.
β. 1495. Trevisa’s Barth. De P. R., XVII. cxxiv. (W. de W.). Yf perys ben sodde wyth tode stoles they take awaye fro them all greyf and malyce.
1519. Horman, Vulg., 101 b. Todestolys, that be gethered from the tree be good to eate.
1530. Palsgr., 281/2. Tode stole, eschampignon.
1562. Turner, Herbal, II. Pref. Dark doctores … which soddenly lyke todestolles stert vp Phisiciones. Ibid., 29 b. A todstole … in a birche or a walnut tre, where of som make tunder.
1567. Maplet, Gr. Forest, 52. The Mushrom or Toadstoole … hath two sundrie kinds,… for the one may be eaten: the other is not to be eaten.
1579. Spenser, Sheph. Cal., Dec., 69. The grieslie Todestoole growne there mought I se And loathed Paddocks lording on the same.
1601. Holland, Pliny (1634), II. 133. The nearer that a Mushrome or Toadstoole commeth to the color of a fig hanging vpon the tree, the lesse presumption there is that it is venomous.
1707. Hearne, Collect., 29 Nov. (O.H.S.), II. 76. The Dorians … us’d to write upon Toad-stools.
1872. Black, Adv. Phaeton, xxii. Moist odour of toadstools and fern.
1904. G. K. Chesterton, Browning, vi. 145. We are akin not only to the stars and flowers, but to the toadstools and the monstrous tropical birds.
b. Popularly restricted to poisonous or inedible fungi, as distinct from edible ‘mushrooms.’
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts (1658), 204. The rennet is also commendable against Hemlock or Toad-stool.
1805. Med. Jrnl., XIV. 573. Toad stools and other species of the fungus kind are frequently eaten for mushrooms.
1859. All Year Round, No. 19. 437. The delicious mushroom, the poisonous toad-stool.
c. fig. (in reference to its rapid growth and short duration: cf. mushroom).
1823. in Cobbett, Rur. Rides (1885), I. 286. This little toad-stool is a thing created entirely by the gamble: and the means have, hitherto, come out of the wages of labour.
1901. Daily News, 2 March, 3/4. Some of the houses that were too solidly built to burn were blown up. Away off on a flank you would see a huge toadstool of dust, rocks, and rafters rise solemnly into the air and then subside in a heap of débris.
d. attrib. and Comb., as toadstool-eater, -eating, -growth; toadstool-like adj.
1886. P. S. Robinson, Valley Teet. Trees, 137. Some of these penny-reading toadstool-eaters would even turn a toad off its stool to eat its seat.
1887. W. D. Hay, Elem. Text-Bk. Brit. Fungi, Pref. vi. So far as ‘toadstool-eating’ goes, I believe I have a right to speak with authority, since my own gastronomic experiments have been many, frequent, and varied.
1892. Antidote, 20 Sept., 303. Wretched sects of toadstool growth, which spring up, fester and die out around us.
1903. Westm. Gaz., 30 Jan., 2/1. A writing-table (in the North Room) with numerous toadstool-like projections … whose ugliness and inconvenience are only too obvious.
