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TOILING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Doing arduous or unpleasant work
Example:
toiling coal miners in the black deeps
Synonyms:
drudging; laboring; labouring; toiling
Classified under:
Similar:
busy (actively or fully engaged or occupied)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb toil
Context examples:
The feeble fingers were never idle, and one of her pleasures was to make little things for the school children daily passing to and fro, to drop a pair of mittens from her window for a pair of purple hands, a needlebook for some small mother of many dolls, penwipers for young penmen toiling through forests of pothooks, scrapbooks for picture-loving eyes, and all manner of pleasant devices, till the reluctant climbers of the ladder of learning found their way strewn with flowers, as it were, and came to regard the gentle giver as a sort of fairy godmother, who sat above there, and showered down gifts miraculously suited to their tastes and needs.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
By night it was dead calm and I was toiling once more at the oars—but weakly, most weakly.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
In the Northland he had evidenced his fealty by toiling in the harness; but there were no sleds in the Southland, nor did dogs pack burdens on their backs.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
There I saw statesmen and soldiers, noblemen and lawyers, farmers and squires, with roughs of the East End and yokels of the shires, all toiling along with the prospect of a night of discomfort before them, on the chance of seeing a fight which might, for all that they knew, be decided in a single round.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Rarely did that hour of the evening come, rarely did I wake at night, rarely did I look up at the moon, or stars, or watch the falling rain, or hear the wind, but I thought of his solitary figure toiling on, poor pilgrim, and recalled the words: “I'm a going to seek her, fur and wide. If any hurt should come to me, remember that the last words I left for her was, “My unchanged love is with my darling child, and I forgive her!””
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I caught sight of him toiling at the main-sheet, heaving it in and flat with his tremendous muscles, the stern of the schooner lifted high in the air and his body outlined against a white surge of sea sweeping past.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
As darkness came on, the hunting-cries to right and left and rear drew closer—so close that more than once they sent surges of fear through the toiling dogs, throwing them into short-lived panics.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
I sought no shelter, therefore, but the sky; and toiling into Chatham,—which, in that night's aspect, is a mere dream of chalk, and drawbridges, and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed like Noah's arks,—crept, at last, upon a sort of grass-grown battery overhanging a lane, where a sentry was walking to and fro.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
There were many things to be brought up from the beach and stored in the outhouse—as oars, nets, sails, cordage, spars, lobster-pots, bags of ballast, and the like; and though there was abundance of assistance rendered, there being not a pair of working hands on all that shore but would have laboured hard for Mr. Peggotty, and been well paid in being asked to do it, yet she persisted, all day long, in toiling under weights that she was quite unequal to, and fagging to and fro on all sorts of unnecessary errands.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
