droil
English edit
Etymology edit
From Dutch druil (“sluggard”). Compare droll.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
droil (countable and uncountable, plural droils)
- (obsolete) A drudge.
- c. 1613, Thomas Middleton, William Rowley, “Wit at Several Weapons. A Comedy.”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):
- Then I begin to rave at my stars' bitterness, / To see how many muckhills plac'd above me; / Peasants and droils, caroches full of dunghills
- (obsolete) Mean labour; toil.
Verb edit
droil (third-person singular simple present droils, present participle droiling, simple past and past participle droiled)
- To work sluggishly or slowly; to plod.
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “droil”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)