toad

英 [t??d] 美[tod]

TEM4CET6CET6+IELTS低頻詞常用詞匯爬行兩棲

復數:?toads;

toad 蟾蜍

來自中古英語 tode,蟾蜍，來自古英語 tadie,蟾蜍，詞源同 tadpole.

toad: toad: [OE] Toad is a mystery word, with no known relatives in any other Indo-European language. Of its derivatives, toady [19] is short for the earlier toad eater ‘sycophant’ [17]. This originated in the dubious selling methods of itinerant quack doctors. They employed an assistant who pretended to eat a toad (toads were thought to be poisonous), so that the quack could appear to effect a miraculous cure with his medicine.

The toad-eating assistant came to be a byword for ‘servility’ or ‘dependency’, and hence for ‘servile flattery’. Toadstools [14] were named for their stool-like shape, and also because of an association between poisonous fungi and the supposedly poisonous toad.
toad (n.): c. 1300, from late Old English tadige, tadie, of unknown origin and according to OED with no known cognates outside English. Applied to loathsome persons from 1560s. Toad-strangler "heavy rain" is from 1919, U.S. Southern dialectal.

1. He grabbed into the ooze and came up clutching a large toad.: 他把手伸進淤泥里撈摸，結果抓上來一只巨大的蟾蜍。

4. The toad had changed its colour to blend in with its new environment.: 蟾蜍已經變色，和新的環境融為一體。

5. The Toad saw at once how wrongly and foolishly he had acted.: 癩哈蟆現在意識到,他的所作所為實在太荒唐,太愚蠢了.