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
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
The results of McCartney’s unceasing post-Beatles toil are evinced by the stats.
From Salon • Nov. 3, 2025
Golf is scratching his sporting itch at the moment - his handicap is down to single figures - and even watching Scotland's footballers toil against Belarus at Hampden has not unduly affected his sunny disposition.
From BBC • Oct. 15, 2025
After that, after a year of toil, there was his promotion to the pel-quintain.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
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From Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group.