Origin Stories: Toady
“Origin story” is an expression for a superhero’s backstory — for instance, Superman was born on Krypton just before it was destroyed. Many words also have fascinating origin stories. While English comes largely from Latin (and from Greek, and from Latin through French and Spanish, with some Germanic roots and a bit of Sanskrit, etc.), you’ll find that word usage can change quite bit over a couple thousand years.
A toady is someone who flatters or acts in a servile manner for self-serving reasons.
Look at that toady, sucking up and offering to do the boss’s Christmas shopping for his kids. Gross.
Lackey, Sycophant, and Myrmidon are synonyms.
Fawn means to try to please in a submissive way.
Obsequious means servile, very compliant, fawning.
Truckle means to act subserviently.
Toady comes from toad-eater, after magicians’ assistants who would supposedly eat poisonous toads so the magician could show off his ability to magically expel the poison. Toadeat used to mean do any degrading thing for your boss, but today you can use toady as a verb (or toady up to someone) for this purpose.
