[f. TOADY sb.]
1. trans. To play the toady to; to flatter, or attend to with servility from interested motives.
1827. Lady Granville, Lett. (1894), I. 406. If her friends would … leave off toadying her.
1857. Hughes, Tom Brown, I. ii. Lots of us of all sorts toady you enough certainly.
1878. J. C. Collins, Tourneur’s Plays, I. Introd. 28. That they might, in thus toadying the memory of a dead son, toady the patronage of a living parricide.
2. intr. To play the servile dependant; to pay deference from interested motives. Const. to.
1861. Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxf., vii. Let them toady and cringe to their precious idols.
1873. M. Collins, Miranda, III. 8. She … toadied to her superiors when she really came face to face with them.
1881. C. E. Turner, in Macm. Mag., Aug., 309/2. We never … toadied for a good place at Moscow, or sneaked into a ministry at Petersburg.
1906. Times, 29 Aug., 4/2. He was toadying round Williamson like a lackey out of work.
Hence Toadying vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1863. W. Phillips, Speeches, vi. 135. The toadying servility of the land.
1866. Cornh. Mag., Aug., 239. Needy toadying courtiers come to batten on the fatter south.
1897. H. Black, Friendship, iv. 82. They encouraged toadying.
