toil
Usage
What are other ways to say toil?
Toil suggests wearying or exhausting labor: toil that breaks down the worker's health. Drudgery suggests continuous, dreary, and dispiriting work, especially of a menial or servile kind: the drudgery of household tasks. Labor particularly denotes hard manual work: backbreaking labor; arduous labor. Work is the general word and may apply to exertion that is either easy or hard: fun work; heavy work.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Escaping the dirt and sweaty toil of the farm was her goal.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 26, 2026
Most toil on the building sites of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia or in hotels and factories there, while others work in India and Malaysia.
From Barron's • Feb. 16, 2026
“He had little choice but to toil ahead.”
From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 30, 2026
The Dubois bout suggested Joshua is in decline, the toil of 33 professional fights after an amateur career eroding his powers.
From BBC • Dec. 20, 2025
San Piedro children delighted in their field toil in part because of the social life it provided, in part because it furnished the illusion that a job had been included in the summer’s proceedings.
From "Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel" by David Guterson
Vocabulary lists containing toil
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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Labor Day Lexicon: Words That Put You To Work
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Animal Farm
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