Meaning & use
toil
Last updated
Meanings
verbintransitive
To work very hard for a long time, usually at a tiring or dull task.
Grammar: No object; often followed by away or in: toil away in the fields.
Patterns
- toil away
- toil at something
- toil in something
Farmers toil from dawn to dusk during the harvest.
She toiled away at her thesis for three years.
The miners toiled in the dark for little pay.
noununcountableliterary
Hard, tiring work that goes on for a long time.
Grammar: Usually uncountable: years of toil.
Patterns
- years of toil
- a life of toil
The house was built through years of toil.
He retired after a lifetime of toil on the railways.
Their toil finally paid off with a good crop.
Word forms
| third person singular | toils |
|---|---|
| past tense | toiled |
| past participle | toiled |
| -ing form | toiling |
| plural | toils |
Common combinations
- toil away
- Workers toil away in the heat.
- toil and sweat
- After all that toil and sweat, we finished.
- honest toil
- He made his living by honest toil.
- years of toil
- Years of toil built the family business.
- toil tirelessly
- Volunteers toiled tirelessly after the flood.
Synonyms and how they differ
- labor
- Labor is the formal word for hard work and also covers factory or manual jobs, while toil stresses exhaustion.
- slave
- Slave away is informal and complaining, suggesting unfair, endless effort.
- drudgery
- Drudgery is the noun for dull, boring work, whereas toil may also be heroic.
- grind
- Grind is informal and suggests monotonous work that wears you down.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: toil or toilet?
toil vs toilet
Toilet is a fixture or room for waste; though similar in spelling, it is unrelated to toil.
Practice
The villagers ___ in the fields until the sun went down.
Choose one answer.
Toiled means worked hard. Toyed, tolled and tailed sound similar but have different meanings.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “toil”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.