How to Use toil in a Sentence

toil

1 of 2 noun
  • The Premier League has brought toil.
    — The Athletic Uk Staff, New York Times, 2 Jan. 2026
  • The scientists' toil wouldn’t win any green-thumb awards down here on Earth.
    — Bernhard Warner, Fortune, 7 June 2022
  • And before the advent of labor laws, children were part of that toil.
    — Maria Teresa Hart, Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Nov. 2022
  • The emotional toil caused by doomscrolling has been shown to cause real harm.
    — ArsTechnica, 22 Sep. 2025
  • Play gives you everything — including a new kind of toil all its own.
    — David Ehrlich, IndieWire, 28 Aug. 2025
  • Until then, they’re left with the tedious toil of prepping garden plots.
    — Charles Selle, Chicago Tribune, 6 May 2026
  • Although the marquee did not glow for quite some time, toil and hope were always behind the scenes.
    — Angela George, Sioux Falls Argus Leader, 23 Jan. 2026
  • Death takes the reins of a poor farmer’s horses, suggesting that the end of life is a relief from toil.
    — Brian T. Allen, National Review, 24 Mar. 2022
  • During those decades were years of toil, thrills, successes, and yes, painful failures too.
    — Gaurav Sharma, Forbes.com, 22 Aug. 2025
  • A lot of kids toil in the mines, ultimately bringing some of that ore to the markets.
    — Bernhard Warner, Fortune, 14 June 2021
  • For me, at least, suffering on the trail means that the pain and toil tend to crowd out space for convenience.
    — Grayson Haver Currin, Outside Online, 27 Feb. 2022
  • No one wants to hear that they are being taken advantage of or that their toil didn’t mean anything.
    — Jp Brammer, Los Angeles Times, 17 Aug. 2023
  • Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that.
    — Jim Millercommunity Voices Contributor, San Diego Union-Tribune, 21 June 2022
  • That goes double double toil and trouble for Halloween masks.
    — Jill Gleeson, Country Living, 13 Oct. 2022
  • Most writers have always had to suffer unrelated toil just to be able to pay the bills.
    — Literary Hub, 14 Jan. 2026
  • Most of the film captures the physical and emotional toil of the ascent.
    — Frederick Dreier, Outside, 3 Mar. 2026
  • This could lead to new deliveries for shareholders and customers once your team is freed from toil.
    — Mark Hull, Forbes.com, 18 June 2026
  • That visceral sense of departure, not just from the shore but from the daily toil, is what draws us back year after year.
    — Los Angeles Times, 2 Feb. 2023
  • But even after decades of toil and a tour-de-force measurement, the evidence is not conclusive.
    — Charlie Wood, Popular Science, 30 Nov. 2020
  • Half of them work mostly at home and the rest toil at home some days and in their Sherman Oaks office on others.
    — Los Angeles Times, 12 Jan. 2022
  • In the placid, rolling landscape that unfurls behind him, women in traditional dress toil in the fields.
    — Los Angeles Times, 22 Sep. 2022
  • Both were premised on the idea of frictionless ease, liberating their users from outmoded toils.
    — Jake Lundberg, The Atlantic, 19 Feb. 2026
  • The conceit of narrating a year in one’s life through the toils and sensations of the kitchen is one that many have taken up before.
    — Hannah Goldfield, New Yorker, 9 Feb. 2026
  • The juggling could have rankled Hardrick, filling him with the desire to cleave the toil from his identity as an artist.
    — Domenica Bongiovanni, The Indianapolis Star, 6 June 2022
  • And yet, our forebears did not dream of our communities to be mired in struggle and toil for generations.
    — Suzy Exposito, Los Angeles Times, 1 June 2023
  • In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, was a change, and the men who came to the scene of daily toil this morning will never return alive.
    — Aj Willingham, AJC.com, 10 June 2026
  • Across the nation, state governments are struggling to operate in the wake of the past year of economic toil.
    — Nick Martin, The New Republic, 22 Dec. 2020
  • Many who had worked on the election, exhausted from months of unrelenting toil, took leaves of absence or moved on to other jobs.
    — Craig Timberg, Elizabeth Dwoskin, Reed Albergotti, Anchorage Daily News, 23 Oct. 2021
  • Outdoor spaces require a certain amount of time and toil, Freda said, which can catch some people by surprise.
    — Curbed, 17 Mar. 2023
  • His friendship and courageous toil for the soul of America always spurred me to do more—for our nation and for the kingdom.
    — Brooke L. Rollins, MSNBC Newsweek, 18 Sep. 2025

toil

2 of 2 verb
  • They were toiling up a steep hill.
  • For the last four years, the players on stage toiled to reach this moment.
    — Paul Tenorio, New York Times, 27 May 2026
  • Mark, 52, toiled in a hot dog factory.
    — Daniel De Visé, USA Today, 28 June 2026
  • Others toiled in restaurants and cleaned hotel rooms.
    — Sam Tabachnik, Denver Post, 6 Jan. 2026
  • Allister toiling as the build-up play was too slow and predictable.
    — James Pearce, New York Times, 24 May 2026
  • While the opera Lulu was playing out front, the tuner and his son toiled backstage.
    — Literary Hub, 6 May 2026
  • Bulls are constantly toiling away at endeavors that speak to their artistry.
    — Lisa Stardust, People.com, 1 Sep. 2025
  • In Ishmaelle’s case that meant toiling away in poverty for the rest of her life back in Kent.
    — Literary Hub, 8 Jan. 2026
  • Workers often toil high above remote landscapes.
    — Daniel De Visé, USA Today, 9 Nov. 2025
  • Workers often toil high above remote landscapes.
    — Daniel De Visé, USA Today, 27 Feb. 2026
  • Yoriko toils in anonymity in Nagi as a sculptor of human figures hewn from raw blocks of wood.
    — Patrick Brzeski, HollywoodReporter, 12 May 2026
  • Jackson spent time in and out of shelters in grade school and remembers how her mother toiled to keep her in class and out of harm's way.
    — Christopher Cann, USA Today, 28 Dec. 2025
  • But a lot of those formative years were spent toiling in London’s open-mic scene and busking on the streets.
    — Julyssa Lopez, Rolling Stone, 11 Mar. 2026
  • How could kids grow properly if they were forced, from their earliest years, to toil in factories, on farms, or in mines?
    — Alexandra Schwartz, New Yorker, 9 Feb. 2026
  • While Alina toils in the greenhouses, Lucian makes new friends.
    — Leo Barraclough, Variety, 13 May 2026
  • Had the trolls toiling in the darkest tunnels of the internet shown up at her actual doorstep?
    — Literary Hub, 30 June 2026
  • But even while toiling away at their laptops, professionals can take one short step to return to their center.
    — Emma Burleigh, Fortune, 29 Mar. 2026
  • After toiling for two hours to really assert themselves on the hosts, the game went to penalties.
    — Beren Cross, New York Times, 15 Feb. 2026
  • Notably, the designer has also toiled away on behalf of her namesake label.
    — Robyn Mowatt, Essence, 9 Sep. 2025
  • Hired in the foreign transactions department, Eliot toiled at a desk in the bank’s basement.
    — René Ostberg, Encyclopedia Britannica, 7 May 2026
  • These figures are not the proprietary work of a data scientist toiling away late into the night.
    — Evan Drellich, New York Times, 27 May 2026
  • Vanderbilt toiled for 13 years to make the independent film.
    — Bryan Alexander, USA Today, 24 Oct. 2025
  • In recent years, the brand has toiled with production and concept campers like few to no other major automakers in the world.
    — New Atlas, 25 Jan. 2026
  • The result is an urgent, yet meditative record that crashes and swirls with splendid riffs and lyrics that toil over all the time that has passed.
    — Maya Georgi, Rolling Stone, 30 Dec. 2025
  • Dockery is often called the birthplace of the Delta blues, where workers toiled in the hot fields by day and sang songs of joy, pain and hope at night.
    — USA Today, 10 Nov. 2025
  • After a decade of toiling largely behind the scenes, David decided to take some credit.
    — Reeves Wiedeman, Vulture, 12 Jan. 2026
  • Keaton Middleton had the type of year last season that thousands of hockey players who have toiled away in the minors dream of.
    — Corey Masisak, Denver Post, 24 Sep. 2025
  • The very irony is that just miles away, immigrant farm workers toil for rock-bottom wages to keep our state’s agriculture industry afloat.
    — Letters To The Editor, The Orlando Sentinel, 19 Aug. 2025
  • What everyone else saw was a quarterback ready for his moment after spending over two years toiling in the background.
    — Kyle Newman, Denver Post, 11 Sep. 2025
  • These days, many would-be retirees are punching clocks in warehouses, toiling as home health aides, or serving customers in retail stores.
    — Ann Larson, Time, 11 June 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'toil.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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