Etymology 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”).
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..1625, Francis Bacon, Of Plantations:
Now he must moil and drudge for one he loathes.1693, John Dryden, “Tenth Satire of Juvenal”, in Juvenal and Persius:
2 more examples
Why for sluggards cark and moil?1849, Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke's Song:
There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.1907, Robert W. Service, “The Cremation of Sam McGee”, in The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses:
2
To churn continually; to swirl.
A crowd of men and women moiled like nightmare figures in the smoke-green haze.1952, Ralph Ellison, chapter 23, in Invisible Man:
Etymology 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”).
1
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.1928, Harry Lauder, chapter VII, in Roamin' in the Gloamin',:
2
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.1948, Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead, Part I, Chapter 5:
3
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.1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh:
Etymology Of unclear origin; possibly from French meule or Hebrew מוהל (mohel, “ritual circumciser”), referring to the foreskin-like shape of the unwanted rim.
1
Arts, Crafts, Glassblowing, Hobbies, Lifestyle 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
Arts, Crafts, Glassblowing, Hobbies, Lifestyle 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).
3
Arts, Crafts, Glassblowing, Hobbies, Lifestyle The metallic oxide from a blowpipe which has adhered to a glass object.