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TOAD
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Any of various tailless stout-bodied amphibians with long hind limbs for leaping; semiaquatic and terrestrial species
Synonyms:
anuran; batrachian; frog; salientian; toad; toad frog
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("toad" is a kind of...):
amphibian (cold-blooded vertebrate typically living on land but breeding in water; aquatic larvae undergo metamorphosis into adult form)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "toad"):
South American poison toad (a South American toad)
tongueless frog (almost completely aquatic frog native to Africa and Panama and northern South America)
sheep frog (mostly of Central America)
eastern narrow-mouthed toad; Gastrophryne carolinensis (small toad of southeastern United States)
Gastrophryne olivacea; western narrow-mouthed toad (small secretive toad with smooth tough skin of central and western North America)
tree-frog; tree frog; tree toad (arboreal amphibians usually having adhesive disks at the tip of each toe; of southeast Asia and Australia and America)
spadefoot; spadefoot toad (a burrowing toad of the northern hemisphere with a horny spade-like projection on each hind foot)
Bombina bombina; fire-bellied toad (toad of central and eastern Europe having red or orange patches mixed with black on its underside)
Alytes cisternasi; midwife toad (similar in habit to Alytes obstetricians)
Alytes obstetricans; midwife toad; obstetrical toad (European toad whose male carries the fertilized eggs wrapped around its hind legs until they hatch)
true toad (tailless amphibian similar to a frog but more terrestrial and having drier warty skin)
Liopelma hamiltoni (primitive New Zealand frog with four unwebbed toes on forefeet and five on hind feet)
Ascaphus trui; bell toad; ribbed toad; tailed frog; tailed toad (western North American frog with a taillike copulatory organ)
tree-frog; tree frog (any of various Old World arboreal frogs distinguished from true frogs by adhesive suckers on the toes)
crapaud; Leptodactylus pentadactylus; South American bullfrog (large toothed frog of South America and Central America resembling the bullfrog)
barking frog; Hylactophryne augusti; robber frog (of southwest United States and Mexico; call is like a dog's bark)
robber frog (small terrestrial frog of tropical America)
leptodactylid; leptodactylid frog (toothed frogs: terrestrial or aquatic or arboreal)
ranid; true frog (insectivorous usually semiaquatic web-footed amphibian with smooth moist skin and long hind legs)
Context examples:
Hagar, the witch, chanted an awful incantation over her kettleful of simmering toads, with weird effect.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
An active ingredient and one of the glycosides in the traditional Chinese medicine ChanSu; it is also a bufadienolide toxin originally isolated from the venom of the Chinese toad Bufo gargarizans, with potential cardiotonic and antineoplastic activity.
(Bufalin, NCI Thesaurus)
We all know—because science has vouched for the fact—that there have been toads shut up in rocks for thousands of years, shut in one so small hole that only hold him since the youth of the world.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
Sooner would I bite living toad or poisoned snake.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
In shape they were like horrible toads, and moved in a succession of springs, but in size they were of an incredible bulk, larger than the largest elephant.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Now that you think me disqualified to become your husband, you recoil from my touch as if I were some toad or ape.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Could swim like a duck, paddled round the castle till he came to a little door guarded by two stout fellows, knocked their heads together till they cracked like a couple of nuts, then, by a trifling exertion of his prodigious strength, he smashed in the door, went up a pair of stone steps covered with dust a foot thick, toads as big as your fist, and spiders that would frighten you into hysterics, Miss March.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Their next business is from herbs, minerals, gums, oils, shells, salts, juices, sea-weed, excrements, barks of trees, serpents, toads, frogs, spiders, dead men’s flesh and bones, birds, beasts, and fishes, to form a composition, for smell and taste, the most abominable, nauseous, and detestable, they can possibly contrive, which the stomach immediately rejects with loathing, and this they call a vomit; or else, from the same store-house, with some other poisonous additions, they command us to take in at the orifice above or below (just as the physician then happens to be disposed) a medicine equally annoying and disgustful to the bowels; which, relaxing the belly, drives down all before it; and this they call a purge, or a clyster.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
