toadying 1 of 3

toadying

2 of 3

noun

toadying

3 of 3

verb

present participle of toady

Examples Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for toadying
Adjective
  • What was criminal in the eyes of Putin and occasioned Navalny’s death was his work exposing the tyrant, his obsequious oligarchs and lickspittle party United Russia as crooks, thieves and killers.
    Bruce Fein, Baltimore Sun, 15 Nov. 2024
  • Sunny initially speaks in an obsequious ChatGPT-generic tone, but the robot gradually adopts Suzie’s speech patterns, softening Suzie’s initial skepticism.
    Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker, 20 Nov. 2024
Noun
  • A certain amount of sycophancy toward the more bizarre elements of the coalition is also common.
    Benjamin Mazer, The Atlantic, 25 Nov. 2024
  • Other tests showed that models can show what’s called a sycophancy bias — the tendency of an LLM to backpedal on a correct answer to please the user.
    Stephen Ornes, Quanta Magazine, 8 Nov. 2024
Adjective
  • But traditional ideas about gender are proving stubborn in the virtual realm, starting with the AI assistants and their sycophantic feminine voices as well as those girls (French, tattooed, blonde) the app cooked up.
    Emily Watlington, ARTnews.com, 27 Nov. 2024
  • Its members' firm repudiation of the unqualified and clownish Matt Gaetz for attorney general shows that its members can still stiffen their sinews and summon up the courage to curb President-elect Donald Trump's appetite for surrounding himself with sycophantic boobs.
    Yaakov Katz, Newsweek, 27 Nov. 2024
Noun
  • The Sunday Masses underscore Notre Dame's dual role as a place of worship and a symbol of communal resilience.
    THOMAS ADAMSON AND SYLVIE CORBET THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, arkansasonline.com, 9 Dec. 2024
  • For the first time since a blaze engulfed it in 2019, the towering Gothic masterpiece reopened for worship.
    Thomas Adamson and John Leicester, Los Angeles Times, 7 Dec. 2024
Noun
  • It’s been a game changer in my household where, tragically, my partner doesn’t share my adoration of Champagne and other fizz.
    Anna Lee Iijima, Chicago Tribune, 11 Dec. 2024
  • Her family, including two brothers, were connected through their adoration for movies and music.
    Gary Baum, The Hollywood Reporter, 9 Dec. 2024
Adjective
  • His co-stars, like Will Ferrell’s savage Mugatu, Owen Wilson’s stoner hottie Hansel, and Nathan Lee Graham’s servile Todd — all so precise and well-defined in the original’s ravelike milieu — are doomed to retrace their old steps here.
    Sean Malin, Vulture, 5 Sep. 2024
  • These officials could, in turn, redistribute some of their private goods among their own servile lieutenants, but the monarch retained ultimate power to grant or revoke their privileged status.
    Serhiy Kudelia, Foreign Affairs, 27 Feb. 2014
Noun
  • But as a Christian, the bigger threat in the U.S. now seems to be Evangelical idolatry—this tendency of many Christians to turn a political candidate into an idol, particularly one who has proven himself so thoroughly unfit as Donald Trump.
    Donovan McAbee, TIME, 28 Oct. 2024
  • People begin drifting to certain games or consoles, staring intently at a wall of idolatry.
    Christopher Cruz, Rolling Stone, 27 Sep. 2024
Adjective
  • This sci-fi film takes viewers to a near future where our main character Nick (Michele Morrone), a construction foreman struggling to manage his family while his wife Maggie (Madeline Zima) battles a serious illness, turns to a subservient robot named Alice (played by Fox) for help.
    Travis Bean, Forbes, 7 Dec. 2024
  • Male fantasies à la the movie Her abound, centered around a subservient love interest with no bodily or emotional needs of her own.
    Emily Watlington, ARTnews.com, 27 Nov. 2024
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Thesaurus Entries Near toadying

Cite this Entry

“Toadying.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/toadying. Accessed 22 Dec. 2024.

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!