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moil

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moil¹

  • /mɔɪl/

Sounds like mohel · Rhymes with -ɔɪl

Where it comes from

From Middle English mollen (“to soften by wetting”), borrowed from Old French moillier with the same meaning, from Vulgar Latin *molliō, *molliare, from mollis (“soft”).

verb moils · moiling · moiled · moile · moyle

  1. To toil, to work hard. Moil not too much underground, for the hope of mines is very uncertain, and useth to make the planters lazy in other things..
  2. intransitive To churn continually; to swirl. A crowd of men and women moiled like nightmare figures in the smoke-green haze.
  3. UK, transitive To defile or dirty.

noun moils · moile · moyle

  1. countable, uncountable Hard work. I finally decided, my heart was really in my singing rather than in the drab, hardy soul- searing toil and moil of a collier's existence.

    Similar: labour, labor, toil, work

  2. countable, uncountable Confusion, turmoil. Croft no longer saw anything clearly; he could not have said at that moment where his hands ended and the machine gun began; he was lost in a vast moil of noise out of which individual screams and shouts etched in his mind for an instant.
  3. countable, uncountable A spot; a defilement. You'd suppose A finished generation, dead of plague, Swept outward from their graves into the sun, The moil of death upon them.

moil²

  • /mɔɪl/

Sounds like mohel · Rhymes with -ɔɪl

Where it comes from

Of unclear origin; possibly from French meule or Hebrew מוהל (mohel, “ritual circumciser”), referring to the foreskin-like shape of the unwanted rim.

noun moils · moile · moyle

  1. countable, uncountable The glass circling the tip of a blowpipe or punty, such as the residual glass after detaching a blown vessel, or the lower part of a gather.
  2. countable, uncountable The excess material which adheres to the top, base, or rim of a glass object when it is cut or knocked off from a blowpipe or punty, or from the mold-filling process. Typically removed after annealing as part of the finishing process (e.g. scored and snapped off).

    Similar: overblow, scrap

  3. countable, uncountable The metallic oxide from a blowpipe which has adhered to a glass object.

Moil³

proper noun

  1. Synonym of Ngan'gityemerri.

    Similar: Ngan'gityemerri

Translations

Every language

noun hard work

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MLA

"moil." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/moil. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

moil. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/moil

Chicago

"moil." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/moil.

BibTeX
@misc{moil_2026,
  title = {moil},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/moil},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}