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Tawdry vs Toady - What's the difference?

tawdry | toady |

As an adjective tawdry

is cheap and gaudy; showy.

As a noun toady is

a sycophant who flatters others to gain personal advantage.

As a verb toady is

to behave like a toady (to someone).

tawdry

English

Adjective

(er)
  • Cheap and gaudy; showy.
  • * 1823 , , Quentin Durward , ch. 33:
    • The rest of his dress—a dress always sufficiently tawdry —was overcharged with lace, embroidery, and ornament of every kind, and the plume of feathers which he wore was so high, as if intended to sweep the roof of the hall.
  • * 1917 , , Calvary Alley , ch. 20:
    • It was all cheap and incredibly tawdry , from the festoons of paper roses on the walls to the flash of paste jewels in make-believe crowns.
  • Unseemly, base, shameful.
  • * 1918 , , The Forty-Niners , ch. 1:
    • [T]he "greaser" was a dirty, idle, shiftless, treacherous, tawdry vagabond, dwelling in a disgracefully primitive house, and backward in every aspect of civilization.
  • * 1920 , , The Great Impersonation , ch. 16:
    • The woman's passion by his side seemed suddenly tawdry and unreal, the seeking of her lips for his something horrible.
  • * 2008 August 9, Clemente Lisi, " Lusty Lies of Don Juan John," New York Post (retrieved 16 Dec 2013):
    • After months of flat-out lying to the public, former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards finally copped to having a sleazy extramarital fling. . . . The tawdry affair has dogged Edwards over the past few months.
    Synonyms
    * See * sordid

    References

    *

    toady

    English

    Noun

    (toadies)
  • A sycophant who flatters others to gain personal advantage.
  • * 1929, , Penguin Books, paperback edition, page 61
    • But how could she have helped herself? I asked, imagining the sneers and the laughter, the adulation of the toadies , the scepticism of the professional poet.
  • * 1912 , Stratemeyer Syndicate, Baseball Joe on the School Nine Chapter 1
    • "Go on, Hiram, show 'em what you can do," urged Luke Fodick, who was a sort of toady to Hiram Shell, the school bully, if ever there was one.
  • * Charles Dickens
    • Before I had been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs.
  • (archaic) A coarse, rustic woman.
    • (Sir Walter Scott)

    Synonyms

    * See also

    Derived terms

    * toadyish

    Verb

  • To behave like a toady (to someone).

    • Anagrams

    *