toady

Definition

A sycophant who flatters others to gain personal advantage, or an obsequious, servile lackey or minion.

Etymology

From a shortening of toadeater + -y.

Example Sentences

• ""But who is she, can you tell me?" / "Some fair-skinned speculation of old Montreville's, I suppose, that she has got either to toady herself, or take in some of her black friends with.—Is it possible you have never heard of old Mother Montreville?""
• "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 a humbug."
• "[T]he appearance of only three coaches, each drawn by four horses, was rather trying for poor Lady Scott. They contained Mrs Coutts – her future lord the Duke of St Albans – one of his Grace's sisters – a dame de compagnie (vulgarly styled a Toady)"