as in tangle
something that catches and holds
a married woman hopelessly caught in the toils of an extramarital affair
Synonyms & Similar Words
Relevance
as in labors
to devote serious and sustained effort
toiled for many years on the mammoth outdoor sculpture
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for toils
Noun
-
The estate of Prince, who died in April 2016, has been involved in a tangle of lawsuits over ownership of the Purple One’s legacy.—
Andrew Flanagan,
Variety,
21 Aug. 2025 -
Lithium orotate helped the mice reduce production of the amyloid plaques and tau tangles, and allowed the microglial cells to remove the plaques much more effectively.—
The Washington Post,
San Diego Union-Tribune,
19 Aug. 2025
Noun
-
Opportunities without support are traps in disguise.—
Expert Panel®,
Forbes.com,
18 Aug. 2025
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According to the almond board, other methods such as bait stations, snap traps and owl boxes – which draw the rodent predators – are also being employed, but farmers say the tactics are expensive and not entirely effective for a plague of this magnitude.—
Jorge L. Ortiz,
USA Today,
18 Aug. 2025
Verb
-
Additionally, the jail struggles to provide adequate food, and unsanitary food distribution practices have left detainees vulnerable to malnutrition, pest infestations and other harms.—
Dan Perry,
Newsweek,
4 Jan. 2025
-
But Moore sometimes struggles to take responsibility in the way expected of leaders.—
Colin Pascal,
Baltimore Sun,
2 Jan. 2025
Noun
-
Rich and famous people with much, much better things to do are willingly humiliating themselves on Hot Ones, a web show that invites celebrities to eat hot wings while answering interview questions and that sold last year for $82.5 million.—
Ellen Cushing,
The Atlantic,
18 Aug. 2025
-
The discovery provides a new glimpse into the complex web of human evolution.—
Ashley Strickland,
CNN Money,
16 Aug. 2025
Verb
-
Eggers and his go-to production designer Craig Lathrop also put a unique emphasis on building realistic worlds—their production design strives extra hard to close gaps between Eggers’s olden aesthetic and the modern audience’s perception.—
Maya Ibbitson,
Architectural Digest,
23 Dec. 2024
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The company strives to be more than just a pet product brand.—
FunnyFuzzy Contributor,
Forbes,
23 Dec. 2024
Noun
-
Donald Trump’s decision to twirl the CHIPS law from subsidy vehicle into an outright ownership stake marks nearly two decades of this government/business entanglement.—
Clyde Wayne Crews Jr,
Forbes.com,
25 Aug. 2025
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The United States emerged disgusted by European entanglements, paving the way for the original America Firsters, who enacted tariffs that deepened the Great Depression and set the stage for a world war rerun.—
S. C. M. Paine,
Foreign Affairs,
19 Aug. 2025
Verb
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The former calls for a counterfactual view of how testing works; the latter calls for political will and policy ideas not currently in evidence.—
Peter Greene,
Forbes,
30 Nov. 2024
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The office also works with the Connecticut State Police Fire and Explosion Investigation Unit, which investigates the cause and origin of fires and arson.—
Sean Krofssik,
Hartford Courant,
30 Nov. 2024
Noun
-
Utilizing cameras to target offenders can both help the police deploy limited resources efficiently and — when combined with facial recognition or bike-registration data — snare offenders remotely.—
Steve Cohen,
New York Daily News,
13 July 2025
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The absence of lobster traps and not being poked and prodded by divers armed with snares, tickle sticks and nets for nearly four months usually results in an abundance of bugs, a term that refers to the insect-like appearance of lobsters.—
Steve Waters,
Miami Herald,
5 July 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Toils.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/toils. Accessed 31 Aug. 2025.
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