Word.ws English Dictionary

toil

/tɔɪl/

toil noun: labour, work, especially of a grueling nature.

Noun (1)

toil (countable and uncountable, plural toils)

  1. Labour, work, especially of a grueling nature.
    • […] he set to work again and made the snow fly in all directions around him. After some further toil his efforts were rewarded, and a very shabby door-mat lay exposed to view.1908, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
  2. Trouble, strife.
  3. (plural-normally) A net or snare; any thread, web, or string spread for taking prey.
    • Then toils for beasts, and lime for birds, were found.1697, Virgil, translated by John Dryden, Georgics
    • I was like a wild beast that had broken the toils, destroying the objects that obstructed me and ranging through the wood with a stag-like swiftness.1823, Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Verb

toil (third-person singular simple present toils, present participle toiling, simple past and past participle toiled)

  1. (intransitive) To labour; work.
    Synonyms:
    travail
  2. (intransitive) To struggle.
  3. (transitive) To work (something); often with out.
    • places well toiled and husbanded1601, C[aius] Plinius Secundus [i.e., Pliny the Elder], “(please specify |book=I to XXXVII)”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Historie of the World. Commonly Called, The Naturall Historie of C....
    • [I] toiled out my uncouth passage.1667, John Milton, “Book X”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished...
  4. (transitive) To weary through excessive labour.
    • toiled with works of war1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to...

Noun (2) capitalized: TOIL

TOIL (uncountable)

  1. (UK, abbreviation, initialism, labour) Initialism of time off in lieu (of monetary compensation for overtime).
    Synonyms:
    comp time

toil meaning in Tamil, Bengali, Telugu and Arabic

toil in Tamil

labor, work
உழைப்பு uḻaippu, பாடு pāṭu
to labour, to work
பாடுபடு pāṭupaṭu, உழை uḻai

toil in Bengali

labor, work
মেহনত mehonot

toil in Telugu

to labour, to work
కష్టపడు kaṣṭapaḍu, కష్టించు kaṣṭiñcu

toil in Arabic

labor, work
كَدْح kadḥ
to labour, to work
تَعِبَ taʕiba, كَدَحَ kadaḥa, كَدَ kada

Examples of toil in a sentence

  • That I was going to sit still, and let you sulk, while mademoiselle walked blindfold into the toils?1893, Stanley J. Weyman, “XIX. Men call it chance”, in A Gentleman of France:
  • She had waited overlong, and now it was like that Ailie would escape her toils.1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide:

All 40 example sentences with toil

Synonyms of toil

2 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of toil

Forms of toil

Noun
pluraltoils
alternative form (obsolete)toyle
Verb
third-person singular presenttoils
present participletoiling
past participletoiled
pasttoiled

Past tense of toil: toiled

Plural of toil: toils

Origin of toil

From Middle English toilen, toylen, apparently a conflation of Anglo-Norman toiller (“to agitate, stir up, entangle”) (compare Old Northern French tooillier, tooullier (“to agitate, stir”); of unknown origin), and Middle English tilyen, telien, teolien, tolen, tolien, tulien (“to till, work, labour”), from Old English tilian, telian, teolian, tiolian (“to exert oneself, toil, work, make, generate, strive after, try, endeavor, procure, obtain, gain, provide, tend, cherish, cultivate, till, plough, trade, traffic, aim at, aspire to, treat, cure”) (compare Middle Dutch tuylen, teulen (“to till, work, labour”)), from Proto-Germanic *tilōną (“to strive, reach for, aim for, hurry”). Cognate with Scots tulyie (“to quarrel, flite, contend”). An alternate etymology derives Middle English toilen, toylen directly from Middle Dutch tuylen, teulen (“to work, labour, till”), from tuyl ("agriculture, labour, toil"; > Modern Dutch tuil (“toil; work”)). Cognate with Old Frisian teula (“to labour, toil”), teule (“labour, work”), Dutch tuil (“toil, labour”). Compare also Dutch telen (“to grow; raise; cultivate, till”). More at till.

Words formed from toil

Words that rhyme with toil

18 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about toil

What does toil mean?
Toil means labour, work, especially of a grueling nature.
What is toil in Tamil?
Toil in Tamil is உழைப்பு (uḻaippu), பாடு (pāṭu), பாடுபடு (pāṭupaṭu). See Toil meaning in Tamil.
How do you use toil in a sentence?
That I was going to sit still, and let you sulk, while mademoiselle walked blindfold into the toils?
What part of speech is toil?
Toil can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce toil?
Toil is pronounced /tɔɪl/.
What is the plural of toil?
The plural of toil is toils.

Words near toil in the dictionary

  1. Toia
  2. Toias
  3. Toiberry
  4. Toijam
  5. toikey
  6. toil
  7. toil and moil
  8. toil'd
  9. toile
  10. toiled
  11. toiled and moiled

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: toil (page history and authors); TOIL (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-toil.ogg.

Cite this entry: “toil.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/toil. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.