means Squat, dry-skinned amphibians, cousins of frogs, that tend to live on land and secrete toxins through their warty skin.

from From Old English 'tāde' or 'tādige,' a word whose deeper roots are lost — it has no clear cousins in other Germanic languages, so where it ultimately hopped from is genuinely unknown. The familiar form 'toad' grew out of these older spellings over centuries of English use.