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.

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[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I love that I post something that seems totally new and bizarre, and my learned friends say "Oh, that old thing!"...