toil

1 of 3

noun (1)

ˈtȯi(-ə)l 

1

: long strenuous fatiguing labor

2

archaic

a

: struggle, battle

b

: laborious effort

toilful

ˈtȯi(-ə)l-fəl 

adjective

toilfully

ˈtȯi(-ə)l-fə-lē 

adverb

toil

2 of 3

verb

toiled; toiling; toils

intransitive verb

1

: to work hard and long

2

: to proceed with laborious effort : plod

transitive verb

1

archaic : overwork

2

archaic : to get or accomplish with great effort

toiler

ˈtȯi-lər 

noun

toil

3 of 3

noun (2)

1

: a net to trap game

2

: something by which one is held fast or inextricably involved : snare, trap

—usually used in plural

caught in the toils of the law

Synonyms

Noun (1)

• donkeywork
• drudge
• drudgery
• fatigue
• grind
• labor
• moil
• slavery
• sweat
• travail

Verb

• bang away
• beaver (away)
• dig (away)
• drudge
• endeavor
• fag
• grub
• hump
• hustle
• labor
• moil
• peg (away)
• plod
• plow
• plug
• slave
• slog
• strain
• strive
• struggle
• sweat
• travail
• tug
• work

Noun (2)

• entanglement
• mesh(es)
• morass
• net
• noose
• quagmire
• quicksand
• snare
• tanglement
• trap
• web

Choose the Right Synonym for toil

work, labor, travail, toil, drudgery, grind mean activity involving effort or exertion.

work may imply activity of body, of mind, of a machine, or of a natural force.

too tired to do any work

labor applies to physical or intellectual work involving great and often strenuous exertion.

farmers demanding fair compensation for their labor

travail is bookish for labor involving pain or suffering.

years of travail were lost when the house burned

toil implies prolonged and fatiguing labor.

his lot would be years of back-breaking toil

drudgery suggests dull and irksome labor.

an editorial job with a good deal of drudgery

grind implies labor exhausting to mind or body.

the grind of the assembly line

Examples of toil in a Sentence

Verb

workers toiling in the fields

They were toiling up a steep hill.

Recent Examples on the Web

Noun

Nearly 1,000 employees, most of them members of the Transport Workers Union Local 100, toil in concert in three daily round-the-clock shifts to overhaul as many as 1,100 cars per year. —David Waldstein, New York Times, 1 Mar. 2024

And though most of the 88% of the foreigners who populate the UAE toil at low-wage jobs, officials express confidence that year-round sun and the absence of income tax can attract the world’s top AI researchers, who are in high demand. —TIME, 20 Mar. 2024

Hirayama clearly derives enjoyment from performing his work well, but there’s more to his life than labor, and more to this movie than a simplistic celebration of manual toil. —Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times, 7 Feb. 2024

All this toil gave Acocella the ability and license to distill and make big judgments even within the restrictive word count of a review or magazine piece. —Charles Arrowsmith, Los Angeles Times, 26 Feb. 2024

If true cohesion, borne of toil and time, is just too hard to pull off in L.A., where the spotlight burns harshly and the king’s reign is finite? —Mirjam Swanson, Orange County Register, 4 Jan. 2024

This often uncovers disconnects, unnecessary toil or broken processes that can be corrected or improved through a workaround. —Expert Panel®, Forbes, 14 Feb. 2024

But without oral histories being passed down through the generations, the struggles and toils of the Moores’ daily life are easily forgotten. —Madeleine Kearns, National Review, 14 Jan. 2024

Rubio knows the toil that spending so long in microgravity can take on human bones, muscle strength, and other parts of the human body that evolved over hundreds of millions of years to live in Earth's gravity. —Eric Berger, Ars Technica, 13 Sep. 2023

Verb

Shocking footage reached viewers across the globe as first responders toiled among steel and concrete beneath the water that the landmark span once bridged. —Ramon Padilla, USA TODAY, 30 Mar. 2024

Among the 15 people who work at Duffy’s is Russell’s long-time business partner Jim Fab, who still toils in the kitchen making soups and sauces and whatever else needs done, long past retirement age but unwilling to stop working. —Connie Ogle, Miami Herald, 27 Mar. 2024

For any home gardeners who spend their weekends toiling in the backyard to keep their annuals alive and shrubbery in good form, the appeal of a botanical garden is obvious. —Nicole Kliest, Vogue, 21 Mar. 2024

That’s because most of them spent their careers toiling in relative anonymity. —Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times, 14 Mar. 2024

Bands could spend years toiling away to create something half as impactful. —Jeff Yerger, SPIN, 4 Mar. 2024

At the same time, Grace Berney — a middle-age mom toiling in an obscure department at the Food and Drug Administration that regulates medical devices — gets a strange assignment. —Sarah Lyall, New York Times, 24 Feb. 2024

Those who survived the brutal voyage ended up toiling on plantations in the Americas, mostly in Brazil and the Caribbean, while others profited from their labour. —Reuters, NBC News, 27 Mar. 2024

Recently, DeBose has been toiling away on the film side of the industry. —Kyle Denis, Billboard, 27 Mar. 2024

Word History

Etymology

Noun (1)

Middle English toile, from Anglo-French toyl, from toiller

Verb

Middle English, to argue, struggle, from Anglo-French toiller to make dirty, fight, wrangle, from Latin tudiculare to crush, grind, from tudicula machine for crushing olives, diminutive of tudes hammer; akin to Latin tundere to beat — more at contusion

Noun (2)

Middle French toile cloth, net, from Old French teile, Latin tela cloth on a loom — more at subtle

First Known Use

Noun (1)

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 2

Verb

15th century, in the meaning defined at intransitive sense 1

Noun (2)

circa 1529, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Kids Definition

toil

1 of 2 noun

ˈtȯi(ə)l 

: long hard labor

toil

2 of 2 verb

1

: to work hard and long

2

: to go on with effort

toiling up a steep hill

toiler noun

Etymology

Noun

Middle English toile "battle, argument," derived from early French toyl, "battle, disturbance, confusion," from toiller (verb) "make dirty, fight, wrangle," from Latin tudiculare "crush, grind," from tudicula "machine with hammers for beating olives," from tudes "hammer"

Word Origin

Even though we have machines to do much of our hard work today, much long, hard toil must still be done by hand. Our Modern English word toil, however, comes from a Latin word for a laborsaving machine. The ancient Romans built a machine for crushing olives to produce olive oil. This machine was called a tudicula. This Latin word was formed from the word tudes, meaning "hammer," because the machine had little hammers to crush the olives. From this came the Latin verb tudiculare, meaning "to crush or grind." Early French used this Latin verb as the basis for its verb, spelled toiller, which meant "to make dirty, fight, wrangle." From this came the noun toyl, meaning "battle, disturbance, confusion." This early French noun in time was taken into Middle English as toile, meaning "argument, battle." The earliest sense of our Modern English toil was "a long, hard struggle in battle." It is natural enough that in time this came to be used to refer to any long hard effort.