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
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Noun
The secondary benefit is reducing toil for multiple teams, which in turn reduces burnout and employee turnover while freeing them up to support real and meaningful changes that improve security programs and posture.—Bob Tinker, Forbes, 9 Oct. 2024 His innie, unaware of this grief, toils in Lumon’s enigmatic Macrodata Refinement department (MDR), disillusioned with the monotony, the secrecy and the repressiveness of Lumon’s operations.—Bryan Alexander, USA TODAY, 14 Jan. 2025
Verb
The ranks of Americans toiling part time because their hours were cut back and those who could only find part-time jobs both rose by double-digit percentages.—Paul Davidson, USA TODAY, 9 Jan. 2025 The stress of being a loyal husband and father while toiling tirelessly at Spacely Space Sprockets – headed by a domineering man with a Napoleon complex – seems to float away as the zooming saucer-like aero cars with large bubble roofs leave behind popcorn-like residue from fuel pellets and radium.—Natasha Gural, Forbes, 6 Jan. 2025 See all Example Sentences for toil
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
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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