Toil vs Delve - What's the difference?
toil | delve |
labour, work
* 1908:
trouble, strife
A net or snare; any thread, web, or string spread for taking prey; usually in the plural.
* Denham
* Dryden
To labour; work.
To struggle.
To work (something); often with out .
* Holland
* Milton
To weary through excessive labour.
* Shakespeare
To dig the ground, especially with a shovel.
* 1381 , John Ball
* Dryden
*
(ambitransitive) To search thoroughly and carefully for information, research, dig into, penetrate, fathom, trace out
* 1609-11 , Shakespeare, Cymbeline, King of Britain
* 1943 , Emile C. Tepperman, Calling Justice, Inc.!
(ambitransitive) To dig, to excavate.
* ca. 1260 , Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend
* 1891 , , The White Company , chapter IV
A pit or den.
* 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , III.iii:
In lang=en terms the difference between toil and delve
is that toil is to weary through excessive labour while delve is to dig the ground, especially with a shovel.As nouns the difference between toil and delve
is that toil is labour, work while delve is a pit or den.As verbs the difference between toil and delve
is that toil is to labour; work while delve is to dig the ground, especially with a shovel.toil
English
Alternative forms
* (l) (obsolete)Noun
(en noun)- ...he set to work again and made the snow fly in all directions around him. After some further toil his efforts were rewarded, and a very shabby door-mat lay exposed to view.
- As a Numidian lion, when first caught, / Endures the toil that holds him.
- Then toils for beasts, and lime for birds, were found.
Verb
(en verb)- places well toiled and husbanded
- [I] toiled out my uncouth passage.
- toiled with works of war
Synonyms
* , (l)See also
* toil and moilAnagrams
* ----delve
English
Verb
- When Adam dalf and Eve span, / Who was then a gentleman?
- Delve of convenient depth your thrashing floor.
- I got a spade from the tool-house, and began to delve with all my might - it scraped the coffin; I fell to work with my hands; the wood commenced cracking about the screws; I was on the point of attaining my object, when it seemed that I heard a sigh from some one above, close at the edge of the grave, and bending down.
- I cannot delve him to the root.
- She was intensely eager to delve into the mystery of Mr. Joplin and his brief case.
- And then they made an oratory behind the altar, and would have dolven for to have laid the body in that oratory ...
- Let him take off his plates and delve' himself, if ' delving must be done.
Synonyms
* (to dig the ground) dig * (to search thoroughly) investigate, researchDerived terms
* delver * indelveNoun
(en noun)- the wise Merlin whylome wont (they say) / To make his wonne, low vnderneath the ground, / In a deepe delue , farre from the vew of day [...].