as in flunkey
a person who flatters another in order to get ahead
no one liked the office toady, who spent most of her time complimenting the boss on what a great job he was doing
Synonyms & Similar Words
Relevance
as in to fuss
to use flattery or the doing of favors in order to win approval especially from a superior
a satirical novel about an amoral go-getter who toadies his way to the top of the corporate ladder
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
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Recent Examples of toady
Audrey Kurth Cronin, Foreign Affairs, 21 Dec. 2011
This won’t end well, especially in a no-guardrails administration staffed by a how-high team of enablers and toadies.
—Bret Stephens, The Mercury News, 13 Mar. 2025
Tori Otten, The New Republic, 27 Feb. 2023
And snobs are accused of toadying to aristocratic types.
—P.j. O'Rourke, Town & Country, 15 Sep. 2016
See All Example Sentences for toady
Noun
But at the end of the Cold War, state sponsors and their toadies lost ground.
—Audrey Kurth Cronin, Foreign Affairs, 21 Dec. 2011
This won’t end well, especially in a no-guardrails administration staffed by a how-high team of enablers and toadies.
—Bret Stephens, The Mercury News, 13 Mar. 2025
Verb
Fox News has long been accused of peddling Trump’s falsehoods and toadying up to the former president.
—Tori Otten, The New Republic, 27 Feb. 2023
And snobs are accused of toadying to aristocratic types.
—P.j. O'Rourke, Town & Country, 15 Sep. 2016
See All Example Sentences for toady
Recent Examples of Synonyms for toady
Verb
-
Williams never fussed about it, though and his relationships with many in the organization weren’t overly affected.—
Roderick Boone,
Charlotte Observer,
14 Apr. 2025
-
No crying or fussing or squirming.—
Danielle Pergament,
SELF,
10 Apr. 2025
Noun
-
There are still sycophants and acolytes, but no savvy producers to make his head-scratching moves appear to make sense.—
Laura Bassett,
Rolling Stone,
14 Apr. 2025
-
This is the grim lesson—one that the ambitious sycophants who attach themselves to power have always been slow to learn—of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall Trilogy, a series of fat, dense novels that filter the reign of Henry VIII through the rise and fall of his Machiavellian advisor, Thomas Cromwell.—
Judy Berman,
Time,
28 Mar. 2025
Verb
-
Other sizable media companies have kowtowed to Trump in a bid to make legal pressures vanish.—
Brian Steinberg,
Variety,
22 Apr. 2025
-
Xi became China’s most powerful political figure in half a century by promoting a new Chinese nationalism—not by kowtowing to anyone, least of all the president of the United States.—
Michael Schuman,
The Atlantic,
11 Apr. 2025
Noun
-
Republican lickspittles like Lindsey Graham and Jim Banks praised Trump and trashed Zelenskyy while Russian leaders rejoiced.—
Maureen Dowd,
The Mercury News,
4 Mar. 2025
-
Of course, being a junior senator and attaching your name to legislation that has little chance of being enacted—none of those have bills passed—is very different from being Vice-President and chief lickspittle to Trump.—
John Cassidy,
The New Yorker,
22 July 2024
Verb
-
Posey will be given a lot of rope, befitting a franchise icon who received almost nothing but fawning praise from the media and fan base since exploding onto the scene.—
Jerry McDonald,
Mercury News,
3 Apr. 2025
-
Eve’s sis Maggie (Julianna Margulies), a novelist who dips into her personal life liberally for inspiration, bickers a lot with her judgmental but fawning husband Nick (Campbell Scott), a novelist bitten by the writer’s block.—
Randy Myers,
The Mercury News,
20 Feb. 2025
Noun
-
Small medieval villages are demolished in the wake of hell’s minions pouring forth from their dimension and into the next.—
Kazuma Hashimoto,
Rolling Stone,
31 Mar. 2025
-
At just 17 years old, Amanda Seyfried booked her breakout role in Mean Girls as Regina George’s bimbo minion who could predict the weather with her boobs.—
airmail.news,
airmail.news,
15 Mar. 2025
Verb
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Fair to say that the Ichiban has already accomplished its primary objective of getting moto nerds to drool over it on their phone screens – even though there is little likelihood that it will be built as it is envisioned.—
New Atlas,
New Atlas,
14 Feb. 2025
-
Pay attention for signs of distress: panting, drooling, a high heart rate, dry nose, lethargy, or even vomiting, staggering or seizures.—
Kate Bradshaw,
The Mercury News,
3 Mar. 2025
Noun
-
The Galactic Emperor’s top henchman and the freedom fighter Luke Skywalker were related?—
Amy Nicholson,
Los Angeles Times,
23 Apr. 2025
-
Their explosive investigation gets even more dangerous as Mike and Marcus must protect murder witness Julie (Téa Leoni) from a French drug kingpin and his deadly henchmen after surviving a shoot-out.—
Rendy Jones,
EW.com,
7 Apr. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Toady.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/toady. Accessed 6 May. 2025.
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