toil

1 of 3

noun (1)

ˈtȯi(-ə)l

Synonyms of toil next

: long strenuous fatiguing labor

archaic

: struggle, battle

: 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

: to work hard and long

: to proceed with laborious effort : plod

transitive verb

archaic : overwork

archaic : to get or accomplish with great effort

toiler

ˈtȯi-lər

noun

toil

3 of 3

noun (2)

: a net to trap game

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

—usually used in plural

caught in the toils of the law

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

Just shows you that every bit of progress that is won through toil and struggle is followed by periods of regression. —

Okla Jones, Essence, 9 Oct. 2023 In Vermont: Unlikely book hits No. 1 on Amazon after daughter's TikTok showed dad's toil, low sales In Denver: Alone and grieving at the airport, 2 strangers comforted her. —

Amanda Lee Myers, USA TODAY, 25 Mar. 2023 The story of Pandora’s box, for example, tells of a woman cursed by the gods who accidentally unleashes all forms of evil, including the toils of labor, on humanity. —

Garrett Potts, Fortune, 12 Sep. 2023 And have faith that the effort is true to our history: The never-ending, regularly frustrating toil of perfecting our Union mandates unlikely, but necessary, alliances. —

Rich Logis, The New Republic, 17 Aug. 2023 Campbell continually got the roll on tough jumpers, as if the basketball gods were rewarding him for all those years of toil. —

Staff Writer follow, Los Angeles Times, 4 Mar. 2023 No one wants to hear that they are being taken advantage of or that their toil didn’t mean anything. —

Jp Brammer, Los Angeles Times, 17 Aug. 2023 Down the road, three older farmers from Ms. Gao’s village toil with shovels, digging a ditch. —

Ann Scott Tyson, The Christian Science Monitor, 5 July 2023 Historically speaking, employers and employees have not seen eye to eye about how much remuneration is sufficient to compensate for workers’ submission to a life of meaningless toil. —

Matthew Gavin Frank, Harper's Magazine, 1 May 2023

Verb

Boyarsky toils in a back room drenched in natural light, her cat Roxy at her side. —

Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times, 4 Nov. 2023 Where others saw journeyman directors toiling away in the Hollywood system, the Hitchcocko-Hawksians saw true artistic fire. —

Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 30 Oct. 2023 The birth of the AR-15, which takes up the first half of American Gun, reads as a classic American origin story: A plucky inventor recognizes a gap in the market, toils away in his free time with grit and ingenuity, and alters history. —

Colin Dickey, The New Republic, 23 Oct. 2023 Instead, nearly five months into the counteroffensive, Ukrainian infantry are still toiling forward in small groups along tree lines packed with Russian trench systems and mines while under fire from artillery and explosive aerial drones. —

James Marson, WSJ, 22 Oct. 2023 Historians may toil in the archives seeking something like truth, but public memory is a political project whose relationship to fact is more precarious. —

Susan Neiman, The New York Review of Books, 28 Sep. 2023 My journey aboard this luxury train is a tribute to his legacy and a nod to the previous generations who toiled to lay the tracks upon which my dreams continue to unfold. —

Essence, 2 Nov. 2023 In prison, Morán is forced to pay protection money to a rough older inmate; he’s played by Germán de Silva, who, in a nicely deadpan touch, also plays the bank director under whom Román continues to toil. —

Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times, 29 Oct. 2023 Here's a breakdown of the Passover story that may be appropriate for telling children: Over 3000 years ago, a wicked Egyptian king forced the ancient Jewish people (the Israelites) to toil in the heat constructing buildings and carrying massive bricks. —

Holly Rizzuto Palker, Parents, 17 Sep. 2023 See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'toil.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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

Time Traveler

The first known use of toil was in the 14th century

See more words from the same century

Cite this Entry

Style

“Toil.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/toil. Accessed 6 Dec. 2023.

Copy Citation

Kids Definition

toil

1 of 2 noun

ˈtȯi(ə)l

: long hard labor

toil

2 of 2 verb

: to work hard and long

: 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.