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Moil may mean "to work hard" but its origins are the opposite of hard; it ultimately derives from Latin mollis, meaning "soft." (Other English derivatives of mollis are emollient, mollify, and mollusk.) A more immediate ancestor of moil is the Anglo-French verb moiller, meaning "to make wet, dampen," and one of the early meanings of moil in English was "to become wet and muddy." The "work hard" sense of moil appears most frequently in the pairing "toil and moil." Both moil and toil can also be nouns meaning "work." Moil implies work that is drudgery and toil suggests prolonged and fatiguing labor.
Synonyms
Verb
- bang away
- beaver (away)
- dig (away)
- drudge
- endeavor
- fag
- grub
- hump
- hustle
- labor
- peg (away)
- plod
- plow
- plug
- slave
- slog
- strain
- strive
- struggle
- sweat
- toil
- travail
- tug
- work
Noun
- ado
- alarums and excursions
- ballyhoo
- blather
- bluster
- bobbery
- bother
- bustle
- clatter
- clutter [chiefly dialect]
- coil
- commotion
- corroboree [Australian]
- disturbance
- do [chiefly dialect]
- foofaraw
- fun
- furor
- furore
- fuss
- helter-skelter
- hoo-ha
- hoo-hah
- hoopla
- hubble-bubble
- hubbub
- hullabaloo
- hurly
- hurly-burly
- hurricane
- hurry
- hurry-scurry
- hurry-skurry
- kerfuffle [chiefly British]
- pandemonium
- pother
- row
- ruckus
- ruction
- rumpus
- shindy
- splore [Scottish]
- squall
- stew
- stir
- storm
- to-do
- tumult
- turmoil
- uproar
- welter
- whirl
- williwaw
- zoo
Examples of moil in a Sentence
Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 24 Feb. 2020
During the Cold War, hot tensions became hopeless moils, conducted for political benefit as much as (and, over time, more than) moral right.
—Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 5 Jan. 2020
Dictionary Entries Near moil
Cite this Entry
“Moil.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/moil. Accessed 22 Dec. 2024.
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