{"id":1835,"date":"2011-03-09T06:45:52","date_gmt":"2011-03-09T11:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.manhattangre.com\/blog\/?p=1835"},"modified":"2019-08-30T16:49:36","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T16:49:36","slug":"origin-stories-toady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/blog\/origin-stories-toady\/","title":{"rendered":"Origin Stories: Toady"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"child superhero\" src=\"\/\/manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2011\/01\/superhero-sm.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"190\" style=\"margin-left: 15px\" align=\"right\" \/><em>&#8220;Origin story&#8221; is an expression for a superhero&#8217;s backstory &#8212; 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&#8217;ll find that word usage can change quite bit over a couple thousand years.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/toady\">toady<\/a> is someone who flatters or acts in a servile manner for self-serving reasons.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Look at that <em>toady<\/em>, sucking up and offering to do the boss&#8217;s Christmas shopping for his kids. Gross.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/lackey\">Lackey<\/a>, <a href=\"\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/sycophant\">Sycophant<\/a>, and <a href=\"\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/myrmidon\">Myrmidon<\/a> are synonyms.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/fawn\">Fawn<\/a> means to try to please in a submissive way.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/obsequious\">Obsequious<\/a> means servile, very compliant, fawning.\u009d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/truckle\">Truckle<\/a> means to act subserviently.<\/p>\n<p>Toady comes from toad-eater,\u009d after magicians&#8217; assistants who would supposedly eat poisonous toads so the magician could show off his ability to magically expel the poison. <em>Toadeat<\/em> used to mean do any degrading thing for your boss,\u009d but today you can use <em>toady<\/em> as a verb (or<em> toady up to<\/em> someone) for this purpose.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2011\/03\/toad-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"toad\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Origin story&#8221; is an expression for a superhero&#8217;s backstory &#8212; 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.), [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,12,13],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-1835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gre-strategies","category-verbal","category-vocabulary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7274,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1835\/revisions\/7274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1835"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}