Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To wet; moisten.
- To soil; dirty; daub.
- To fatigue by labor; weary.
- To soil one's self; wallow in dirt.
- To drudge; labor; toil.
- n. Defilement.
- n. Labor; drudgery.
- n. A mule.
- n. A kind of high shoe.
- n. In glass-making, the metallic oxid adhering to the glass which is broken from the end of the blowpipe.
- n. A tool occasionally used by miners in certain districts instead of a pick when accurate cutting is to be done. The moil (also called a set) is usually made of drill-steel, about two and a half feet long, and pointed at the end like a gad. The gad, however, is short, and intended to be struck with the hammer; the moil is held and worked in the hand, like a short crowbar.
Wiktionary
- v. To toil, to work hard.
- v. To churn continually.
- n. Hard work.
- n. Confusion, turmoil.
- n. An unwanted rim of glass left after blow molding.
- n. Genitive of mol.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To daub; to make dirty; to soil; to defile.
- v. To soil one's self with severe labor; to work with painful effort; to labor; to toil; to drudge.
- n. A spot; a defilement.
WordNet 3.0
- v. moisten or soil
- v. be agitated
- v. work hard
Etymologies
- Middle English mollen, to soften by wetting, from Old French moillier, from Vulgar Latin *molliāre, from Latin mollia (pānis), the soft part (of bread), from neuter pl. of mollis, soft; see mel-1 in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“Un Lun Dun is set, for the most part, in an alternate London, a place where all the "moil" of the real London goes, the moil being everything that's broken, discarded, or obsolete.”
“But 's tued an 'moil'd' issén deäd, an '' e died a good un, 'e did.”
“IT IS a sad world wherein the millions of the stupid lowly are compelled to toil and moil at the making of all manner of commodities that can be and are on occasion destroyed in an instant by the hot breath of war.”
“When he had the news from the village, he had the gates closed at once, and forbade anyone from the Castle to go down, for fear of being caught up in the moil.”
“And it pleases him to have me willing, not skulking and sulking like a a…moodiwart, a moil, mole.”
“In the ceaseless toil and moil of this process, however, the administration will be without any means of testing their bearings.”
“In ceaseless toil and moil, the military will be without any means of testing its bearings.”
“The classic ballad of the Klondike gold rush can still thrill children (and their parents) with lines like: “There are strange things done in the midnight sun/By the men who moil for gold …””
“I answered, “I am a gentleman53 and a merchant, who hath been wrecked and saved myself on one of the planks of the ship, with some of my goods; and by the blessing of the Almighty and the decrees of Destiny and my own strength and skill, after much toil and moil I have landed with my gear in this place where I awaited some passing ship to take me off.””
“Almighty to foreswear travel; and if I perish I shall be at peace and shall rest from toil and moil.”
Lists
‘moil’ hasn't been added to any lists yet.
milosrdenstvi Often used, poetically, in the phrase "toil and moil". Jul 31, 2008
bilby I live near Moil, a suburb named after an Aboriginal tribe. Jul 29, 2008
reesetee Most of the words on that glassmaking list inspire that reaction, bilby. :-) Jul 28, 2008
bilby I'm glad reesetee's citation was about glassmaking. Jul 23, 2008
reesetee In glassmaking, the moil is the unwanted top of a blown object. At the last stage in the forming process when the object is removed from the blowpipe, the glassmaker is left with a narrow opening that he/she does not want. After annealing the object, the glassmaker removes the top, usually by cracking off. The moil from a mold-blown object is often known as an overblow. Nov 9, 2007
quotato http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/moil says that moil was their word of the day on that most infamous day. When you read the meaning of this word it speaks for itself. Feb 1, 2007