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.
实用例句
1. He grabbed into the ooze and came up clutching a large toad.
他把手伸进淤泥里捞摸，结果抓上来一只巨大的蟾蜍。来自柯林斯例句
2. His eyes seemed to bulge like those of a toad.
他的眼睛鼓得像癞蛤蟆。来自柯林斯例句
3. Both the toad and frog are amphibian.
蟾蜍和青蛙都是两栖动物.来自《简明英汉词典》
4. The toad had changed its colour to blend in with its new environment.
蟾蜍已经变色，和新的环境融为一体。来自柯林斯例句
5. The Toad saw at once how wrongly and foolishly he had acted.
