toil
Plural: toils
Noun
- productive work (especially physical work done for wages)
- Labour, work, especially of a grueling nature.
- Trouble, strife.
- A net or snare; any thread, web, or string spread for taking prey.
Verb
Verb Forms: toiled, toiling, toils
- To work extremely hard and strenuously, often with difficulty.
- work hard
- To labour; work.
- To struggle.
- To work (something); often with out.
- To weary through excessive labour.
Examples
- She had to toil for hours to find a bingo on her difficult Scrabble rack.
Origin / Etymology
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.
Synonyms
dig, drudge, fag, grind, labor, labour, moil, travail, chores, derve, drudgery, drudgework, fatigue, razzmatazz, scut, scutwork, sweat, swink, toil
Scrabble Score: 4
toil: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordtoil: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
toil: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary