teacher’s pet

   An accusation levelled at certain children by their peers, if the latter consider that undue favouritism is being shown by the teacher to the child concerned. An example occurs in Deborah, by Marian Castle, a novel set in Dakota. The Opies, in The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, remark that such a child may also be called: Pet or Petty, Teacher’s good boy, holy angel, little innocent.

   A child who has become the teacher’s pet by making up to the teacher comes in for abuse by being called: toad or toady, worms, crawler, grease boy, grease rat, goody-goody, namby-pamby, according to the district in which the school is situated. Such terms tend to be passed from one generation of school-children to another in playground exchanges, but each area, and sometimes each school in an area, has its own traditions.