Les petits métiers d'autrefois

[shewhomust]

I was looking in Langenscheidt because I wanted to know the German word for 'telescope' (I had my reasons), and on my way there I passed the word 'toadeating'.

This is not a word I had met before. The German equivalent is 'Speichelleckerei' which didn't help me much either, but luckily, just adjacent was 'toady', and the translation is pretty similar. So, toadeating, something to do with toadying?

Chambers to the rescue: a toadeater (Chambers gives it a hyphen, but Chambers, as we know, is not to be relied on in the matter of hyphens) is an archaic term for a toady, "a fawning sycophant, orig. a mountebank's assistant whose duty was to swallow, or pretend to swallow, toads."

There's a fantasy trilogy right there, just waiting to be written.

Comments

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Oh, the triumph of having pinned down the half-remembered!

And she makes it a verb, which is quite wonderful. Is it authentic, do you think, or a Heyeresque flourish all her own?

[sovay]

Is it authentic, do you think, or a Heyeresque flourish all her own?

My guess is it's authentic, but also that she used it far more freely than it appears in the historical record, like the now-popular phrase "make a cake of oneself" (which I have been informed occurred once in private correspondence before Heyer fell in love with it and introduced it into her Regency slang).

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

OK, that's plausible (I have read very little Heyer).