toiled; toiling; toils
Synonyms
Examples of toil in a Sentence
Noun (1)
after years of toil in a sweatshop, Kim was finally able to start her own dressmaking business
Verb
workers toiling in the fields
They were toiling up a steep hill.
Noun (2)
a married woman hopelessly caught in the toils of an extramarital affair
Recent Examples on the Web
Deborah Treisman, The New Yorker, 3 Nov. 2024
In addition to being a great way to attract young talent to an agricultural career this is turning out to be a great way to reduce the cost and undesirable toil of hand weeding – particularly in things like leafy vegetable crops.
—Steven Savage, Forbes, 22 Oct. 2024
Daniel De Visé, USA TODAY, 1 Nov. 2024
Waters, one of the few players of Native American descent in NBA history, spent the first three years of his career toiling on the end of Oklahoma City’s bench.
—Danny Emerman, The Mercury News, 30 Oct. 2024
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Noun
Life itself, with all its toil, drudgery, tragedy, and pain, is weighty enough.
—Deborah Treisman, The New Yorker, 3 Nov. 2024
In addition to being a great way to attract young talent to an agricultural career this is turning out to be a great way to reduce the cost and undesirable toil of hand weeding – particularly in things like leafy vegetable crops.
—Steven Savage, Forbes, 22 Oct. 2024
Verb
In Florida, with an average monthly rent of $2,033, a renter would toil for 63.5 hours at $32.01 an hour to make the rent.
—Daniel De Visé, USA TODAY, 1 Nov. 2024
Waters, one of the few players of Native American descent in NBA history, spent the first three years of his career toiling on the end of Oklahoma City’s bench.
—Danny Emerman, The Mercury News, 30 Oct. 2024
See all Example Sentences for toil
Dictionary Entries Near toil
Cite this Entry
“Toil.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/toil. Accessed 1 Dec. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
toil
1 of 2 noun
: long hard labor
toil
2 of 2 verb1
: 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.
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