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.
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
Like lottery winners, wealthy individuals fear their offspring might blow money they haven’t had to toil for.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 27, 2025
For 77 minutes the United head coach watched his players toil.
From BBC • Nov. 24, 2025
Arthur’s were of the pitiful spectacle— the show of an earthly, sinful man, but the best of them, plodding along behind these three supernatural virgins; his doomed, courageous, vain toil.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
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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