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toady
in a sentence

The toady clerk answered for me.† (source)

He compiled lists of old words too — words of a precision and suggestiveness that no longer had a meaningful application in today's world, or toady's world, as Jimmy sometimes deliberately misspelled it on his term papers.† (source) Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake, 2003

All the bugs and toady-frogs shut right up, they quit chasing and biting each other 'cause this had to be the loudest whistle they'd ever heard too.† (source)

Matthew Wood, after baiting John with fierce questions that threw the young student into confusion, had scornfully labeled him a "young toady with no mind of his own."† (source)

I'm no man's toady."† (source)

She thought of that, worried about it for a few days, and then wrote a column using that as a premise, to show that politicians who toadied to the Russians in order to keep the peace would inevitably end up subservient to them in everything.† (source) Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game, 1977

Halfway to Miami International, comfortably away from the switchboard where Queems or Queems's toadies were known to listen in, Hallorann stopped at a shopping center Laundromat and called United Air Lines.† (source) Stephen King, The Shining, 1977

"I deal in information," he says to the smarmy, toadying pseudojournalist who "interviews" him.† (source) Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, 1992

I'm a foot from Marcus, my fists hungry for his flesh, when two of his toadies, Thaddius and Julius, grab me from behind, wrenching my arms back.† (source)

Within its surface, he did not see his own face but that of a toady-faced goblin with a forelock of black hair and a lipless mouth that stretched from ear to ear.† (source) Henry H. Neff, The Maelstrom, 2012

But what was funny as heck was Grandpa with that bruised, swelled-up nose, the big knot like a horn on his forehead, the black eyes like a dern raccoon's mask, the scab over one eye like a sword slash on a pirate, the itchy three-day sprouting of gray whiskers — and Miss Love gazing at him like he was Prince Charming come to the costume ball dressed up as a toady frog.† (source) Olive Ann Burns, Cold Sassy Tree, 1984

show 35 more with this conextual meaning

I knew she thought I was a toady boy, but maybe having survived a brush with Saint Dane gave me a little more credibility.† (source)

And the path I have in mind for you is far greater than being the mere toady of a stupid King.† (source) Orson Scott Card, Red Prophet, 1988

As soon as I had the jacket over me the smell of the spice and soap and the sound of the crickets and toady-frogs outside made my eyes get real heavy.† (source)

Out here in the country the sounds were loud too, but what I was hearing was the sound of bugs and toady-frogs and mice and rats playing a dangerous, scary kind of hide-and-go-seek where they rustle around and try to keep away from each other or try to find each other.† (source)

He didn't know him well since he was only an extra, and he didn't want to look like a toady and be despised.† (source)

So then I put my head out of the window and called to him: 'Good evening, Mulcaster, old sponge and toady, are you lurking among the hobbledehoys?† (source)

I asked, imagining the sneers and the laughter, the adulation of the toadies, the scepticism of the professional poet.† (source)

That impostor! that humbug! that toadying ignoramus!† (source) George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, 1912

My brothers are my toadies here, my dear, and a pretty pair they are!† (source)

Miss Toady explained presently, with that simplicity which distinguishes all her conduct.† (source)

And Toady asked Briefless and his wife to dinner the very next week.† (source)

Neither as a boy nor as a man was he a toady, but from early youth was by nature attracted to people of high station as a fly is drawn to the light, assimilating their ways and views of life and establishing friendly relations with them.† (source)

There were some of the girls who were of her own sort, who were willing to toady to her and flatter her; and these would carry tales about the rest, and so the furies were unchained in the place.† (source) Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, 1906

He was too proud to toady, too keen not to strictly observe the plane he occupied when there were those present who did not appreciate him, but, in situations like the present, where he could shine as a gentleman and be received without equivocation as a friend and equal among men of known ability, he was most delighted.† (source) Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie, 1900

She had her toadies, minor officials in Government offices who ran about putting through little jobs on her behalf, in return for which she gave them luncheon.† (source) Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, 1925

There you see the kind of humanism that absolutely does not become ensnared in contradictions, that is in no way guilty of a retreat into Christian toadying, even though it resolves to see in the body the evil force, the antagonist.† (source) Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, 1924

She understood now that the real reason that Miss Henderson hated her was that she was a decent married girl; and she knew that the talebearers and the toadies hated her for the same reason, and were doing their best to make her life miserable.† (source) Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, 1906

I'm intrigued by its fickle tricks, the way it can toady up to you and then turn incredibly obstinate.† (source) Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, 1924

Fyodor Pavlovitch, for instance, began with next to nothing; his estate was of the smallest; he ran to dine at other men's tables, and fastened on them as a toady, yet at his death it appeared that he had a hundred thousand roubles in hard cash.† (source)

Before I had been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that each of them pretended not to know that the others were toadies and humbugs: because the admission that he or she did know it, would have made him or her out to be a toady and humbug.† (source)

She knew that Princess Varvara had passed her whole life toadying on her rich relations, but that she should now be sponging on Vronsky, a man who was nothing to her, mortified Dolly on account of her kinship with her husband.† (source) Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877

He was educated at home till he was fourteen, surrounded by cheap tutors, free-and-easy but toadying adjutants, and all the usual regimental and staff set.† (source) Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, 1862

And they stood, under similar orders, at all sorts of elections; and they turned out of their own seats, on the shortest notice and the most unreasonable terms, to let in other men; and they fetched and carried, and toadied and jobbed, and corrupted, and ate heaps of dirt, and were indefatigable in the public service.† (source) Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, 1857

A petty knave, a toady and buffoon, of fairly good, though undeveloped, intelligence, he was, above all, a moneylender, who grew bolder with growing prosperity.† (source)

Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had a toady neighbor; a widow lady of that highly sympathetic nature that she agreed with everybody, blessed everybody, and shed smiles and tears on everybody, according to circumstances.† (source)

No one but themselves and Mrs. Coiler the toady neighbor showed any interest in this part of the conversation, and it appeared to me that it was painful to Herbert; but it promised to last a long time, when the page came in with the announcement of a domestic affliction.† (source)

Before I had been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that each of them pretended not to know that the others were toadies and humbugs: because the admission that he or she did know it, would have made him or her out to be a toady and humbug.† (source)

"When I come into the country," she says (for she has a great deal of humour), "I leave my toady, Miss Briggs, at home.† (source)

For his friends and cronies, he had a pompous old schoolmaster, who flattered him, and a toady, his senior, whom he could thrash.† (source)

What, I asked in my own mind, can cause this obsequiousness on the part of Miss Toady; has Briefless got a county court, or has his wife had a fortune left her?† (source)

Wenham, the wit and lawyer, Lord Steyne's right-hand man, went about everywhere praising her: some who had hesitated, came forward at once and welcomed her; little Tom Toady, who had warned Southdown about visiting such an abandoned woman, now besought to be introduced to her.† (source)

I observed old Miss Toady there also present, single out for her special attentions and flattery little Mrs. Briefless, the barrister's wife, who is of a good family certainly, but, as we all know, is as poor as poor can be.† (source)

And so, nothing loth to comfort a sick lady, and perhaps not sorry in her heart to be freed now and again from the dreary spouting of the Reverend Bartholomew Irons, and the serious toadies who gathered round the footstool of the pompous Countess, her mamma, Lady Jane became a pretty constant visitor to Miss Crawley, accompanied her in her drives, and solaced many of her evenings.† (source)

All the toady news.† (source) James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922

Like John o'Gaunt his name is dear to him, as dear as the coat and crest he toadied for, on a bend sable a spear or steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his glory of greatest shakescene in the country.† (source) James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922

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