toil
n. uncountablen. hard work that is physically or mentally tiring and lasts for a long time.
n. prolonged, exhausting physical or mental labour. Often used in literary or formal contexts to emphasise the difficulty or repetitive nature of a task.
After years of toil, the farmer finally owned his land.
The ancient monuments stand as a testament to the decades of human toil required to move such massive stones.
The scholar's life was one of quiet toil, spent mostly in dusty archives piecing together fragments of a forgotten language that few others cared to understand.
From Middle English toilen, toylen, apparently a conflation of Anglo-Norman toiller (“to agitate, stir up, entangle”) (compare Old Northern French tooillier, tooullier (“to agitate, stir”); of unknown origin), and Middle English tilyen, telien, teolien, tolen, tolien, tulien (“to till, work, labour”), from Old English tilian, telian, teolian, tiolian (“to exert oneself, toil, work, make, generate, strive after, try, endeavor, procure, obtain, gain, provide, tend, cherish, cultivate, till, plough, trade, traffic, aim at, aspire to, treat, cure”) (compare Middle Dutch tuylen, teulen (“to till, work, labour”)), from Proto-Germanic *tilōną (“to strive, reach for, aim for, hurry”). Cognate with Scots tulyie (“to quarrel, flite, contend”). An alternate etymology derives Middle English toilen, toylen directly from Middle Dutch tuylen, teulen (“to work, labour, till”), from tuyl ("agriculture, labour, toil"; > Modern Dutch tuil (“toil; work”)). Cognate with Old Frisian teula (“to labour, toil”), teule (“labour, work”), Dutch tuil (“toil, labour”). Compare also Dutch telen (“to grow; raise; cultivate, till”). More at till.
Typically uncountable when referring to the abstract concept of hard work; occasionally used with 'the' in literary descriptions of specific struggles.