Synonyms of toiling

toiling

verb

present participle of toil

as in laboring

to devote serious and sustained effort

toiled for many years on the mammoth outdoor sculpture

Synonyms & Similar Words

• laboring
• struggling
• striving
• working
• endeavoring
• trying
• slaving
• plowing
• sweating
• grubbing
• hustling
• tugging
• drudging
• slogging
• plodding
• digging (away)
• plugging
• moiling
• straining
• humping
• travailing
• pegging (away)
• fagging
• banging away
• applying (oneself)
• beavering (away)
• sweating blood
• buckling (down)
• attacking
• exerting
• hammering (away)
• scratching
• driving
• trudging
• essaying
• exercising
• pitching in
• wading
• digging in
• scrabbling
• overworking
• grinding (out)
• eking out
• knuckling down
• overexerting
• putting out

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

• breaking
• slackening
• lounging
• idling
• loafing
• easing (up)
• shirking
• resting
• chilling
• lazing
• dallying
• hanging (around or out)
• bumming
• letting up
• basking
• lolling
• playing
• reposing
• relaxing
• unwinding
• hanging
• hacking (around)
• slacking (off)
• goofing (off)
• dabbling
• goldbricking
• trifling
• footling
• dillydallying
• doodling
• fooling around
• messing around
• vegging out
• puttering (around)
• goofing (around)
• pottering (around)
• monkeying (around)
• hanging about
• fribbling

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of toiling

Some of these movies are not only forgotten but were barely known to begin with, given Hooper’s termite-like existence in the 1990s and 2000s, decades spent toiling in low-budget straight-to-DVD indies, and anonymous cable television assignments. — Jim Hemphill, IndieWire, 28 Oct. 2026

Kessler, meanwhile, has not even approached the All-Star conversation while toiling with Utah. — Los Angeles Times, 22 Oct. 2026

The influence of Black American music was absent from not just their Warwickshire peers at the time, but all of the dour indie milieu toiling under Thatcher’s grey skies. — Gabriel Szatan, Pitchfork, 18 Oct. 2026

Compared to a woman who spends her days toiling to defend some of America’s most underserved, Lee’s a man who wrote a puff piece about some rich, white dude. — Amanda Whiting, Vulture, 15 Oct. 2026

By the doorway to the catwalk two people sat toiling at desks, one hand-beading a piece of cloth and the other machine sewing a denim garment. — Leah Dolan, CNN Money, 21 Sep. 2026

Seth Wenig After a lifetime toiling away in anonymity, Macken hopes to display the model elsewhere when the museum exhibit ends on Columbus Day. — CBS News, 18 Sep. 2026

To watch someone toiling away in the service of something great is not, in the end, so very different from watching someone toiling away in the service of something terrible. — Becca Rothfeld, New Yorker, 29 Aug. 2026

Why does the fantasy of an artist toiling away in solitude have so much appeal? — Maxwell Adler, Vanity Fair, 28 Aug. 2026