toil1 verbtoil2 noun
toiltoil1 /tɔɪl/ verb [intransitive always + adverb/preposition] 
Word OriginWORD ORIGINtoil1
Verb TableOrigin:
1200-1300 Anglo-French toiller, from Old French toeillier ‘to disturb, argue’, from Latin tudiculare ‘to crush’, from tudicula ‘machine for crushing olives’, from tudes ‘hammer’VERB TABLE
toil
| Simple Form | ||
| Present | I, you, we, they | toil |
| he, she, it | toils | |
| Past | I, you, he, she, it, we, they | toiled |
| Present perfect | I, you, we, they | have toiled |
| he, she, it | has toiled | |
| Past perfect | I, you, he, she, it, we, they | had toiled |
| Future | I, you, he, she, it, we, they | will toil |
| Future perfect | I, you, he, she, it, we, they | will have toiled |
| Continuous Form | ||
| Present | I | am toiling |
| he, she, it | is toiling | |
| you, we, they | are toiling | |
| Past | I, he, she, it | was toiling |
| you, we, they | were toiling | |
| Present perfect | I, you, we, they | have been toiling |
| he, she, it | has been toiling | |
| Past perfect | I, you, he, she, it, we, they | had been toiling |
| Future | I, you, he, she, it, we, they | will be toiling |
| Future perfect | I, you, he, she, it, we, they | will have been toiling |
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER DICTIONARIES
Thesaurus- Men. women and children spent long hours toiling in the fields, whatever the weather conditions.
- My immigrant parents toiled night and day to make a living.
- Roger and his wife toiled round the clock for seven years to make a success of their business.
- For a year, birthday preparation committees throughout the nation have toiled for this moment.
- For eight years, he toiled in the House minority party.
- The workers and peasants toil and sweat to service debts owed to the international bankers and multilateral agencies.
- This was a process in which I had never engaged back in the bad old days when I toiled on a typewriter.
- Today less than thirty thousand workers toil in those same coal mines.
Longman Language Activatorto work extremely hard► slave away
Collocations informal to work very hard at something you do not enjoy and do not want to do: · I've been slaving away all week and I've had enough of it!slave away at: · Ed had been slaving away at his essay for hours, but it still wasn't finished.slave away to do something: · The poor man spent ten years of his life slaving away to pay back the money they had borrowed.
► work your fingers to the bone informal to work extremely hard for a long time - use this when you are complaining about how hard you have to work: · In those days we got up at 5 in the morning, and worked our fingers to the bone.· His mother had had a hard life - had worked her fingers to the bone bringing up six children.
► work your butt/ass off American spoken to work very hard, especially for a period of time on one particular thing - use these only in situations where you know people well as they are considered impolite by many people: · It hasn't been easy. The truth is I've worked my ass off for everything I've achieved.work your butt/ass off to do something: · Lea worked her butt off to graduate with honors and big scholarships.
► toil formal to work hard for a long time, especially doing work that is boring or difficult: · Men. women and children spent long hours toiling in the fields, whatever the weather conditions.toil to do something: · Roger and his wife toiled round the clock for seven years to make a success of their business.
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES► work/labour/toil in obscurity
1 (also toil away) to work very hard for a long period of timetoil at (=work without being well-known)· After years of working in obscurity, his paintings are now hanging in museums.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE CORPUSNOUN► worker· The workers and peasants toil and sweat to service debts owed to the international bankers and multilateral agencies.· Today less than thirty thousand workers toil in those same coal mines.· Elsewhere, factory workers toiled twelve hours a day, six days a week, and their hollow-eyed children worked with them.
I’ve been toiling away at this essay all weekend.2literary to move slowly and with great efforttoil up/through/along etc They toiled slowly up the hill.toil1 verbtoil2 noun
toiltoil2 noun [uncountable] formal Word OriginWORD ORIGINtoil2
ExamplesOrigin:
1 1300-1400 Anglo-French toyl, from Old French toeil ‘battle, confusion’, from toeillier; ➔ TOIL12 1500-1600 toil ‘net’ (16-19 centuries), from French toile; ➔ TOILETEXAMPLES FROM OTHER DICTIONARIES
Thesaurus- Here began their arduous toil to force a living from the land.
- man's desire for freedom from physical toil
- After four carefree years, one enters the Company, where the daily round of obedient toil begins again.
- From now on Adam's work is to be sweat and toil.
- Man is made to relieve the gods of the toil of keeping the earth in order.
- Mortal pain and toil have yielded before the promise of redemption in Revelations.
- Such toil could easily be made unnecessary if a little social effort and investment could be applied.
- There was no time for the arduous toil required to master a foreign language.
- These, although mortal, lived like gods without sorrow of heart, far from toil and pain.
- Working copy: not likely to withstand further toil.
Longman Language Activatorunpleasant or boring work► grind
Collocations things that you have to do every day, especially as part of your job, which are boring and make you feel tired: grind of: · Work feels like such a grind lately.· The relentless grind of hard labour and ill-health had taken its toll on Booth. the daily grind: · The daily grind of meetings and tutorials went on.hard grind British: · The Prime Minister is pictured taking a break from the hard grind of political life.
► be a slog British use this to say that work is difficult, boring, and tiring: · The journey across the valley to the farm is going to be a slog.hard/long slog: · It's a hard slog isn't it? I wish we'd got further yesterday.· Cutting all the wood before nightfall was a long, hard slog.
► donkey work British /grunt work American informal work that is boring or takes a lot of time and effort, but that has to be done as part of a job or larger piece of work: · I was doing grunt work for the secretary in the department, twenty hours a week.· The real donkey work was actually done by those guys.
► drudgery work that is hard and unpleasant because it is very boring, takes a long time to do, and often involves a lot of physical effort: · Technological advances have taken much of the drudgery out of the assembly line and car plant.· What seemed a promising job turned into months of boredom and drudgery.the drudgery of something: · The data management system has eliminated much of the drudgery of filing.· Calculators were introduced to relieve students of the drudgery of pencil-and-paper number-crunching.
► toil formal difficult and boring work that takes a long time: · Here began their arduous toil to force a living from the land.· man's desire for freedom from physical toil
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES► work/labour/toil in obscurity
Phrases (=work without being well-known)· After years of working in obscurity, his paintings are now hanging in museums.
PHRASES FROM THE ENTRY► the toils of something
1hard unpleasant work done over a long period: - When we wake it is to find ourselves alone and separate, trapped in the toils of matter.
- With one bound, he was ... John Major has escaped the toils of the poll tax.
- Yet lured they were, ever deeper into the toils of matter, and women with them too.
a life of toil2the toils of something literary if you are caught in the toils of an unpleasant feeling or situation, you are trapped by it