Synonyms:
drudging, laboring, labouring, toiling
Meaning: doing arduous or unpleasant work; "drudging peasants"; "the bent backs of laboring slaves picking cotton"; "toiling coal miners in the black deeps"
Usage examples
In the next a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall.
Most men were toiling at tasks which they did not like, by rules which they did not understand.
Pierre stepped out of his carriage and, passing the toiling militiamen, ascended the knoll from which, according to the doctor, the battlefield could be seen.
Rikiu loved to quote an old poem which says: "To those who long only for flowers, fain would I show the full-blown spring which abides in the toiling buds of snow-covered hills."
At the boat with zeal he laboured, Toiling at the work unresting, Working thus one day, a second, On the third day likewise working, But the rocks his axe-blade touched not, And upon the hill it rang not.
Ashore, the banks of the river were lined with foot passengers toiling under heavy packs, wagons to which clung human forms on every foot of space, and long rows of pack-horses bogged in the flood of the overflowing river.
I recollect also that, after toiling and watching and creeping about for the greater part of a day, with scarcely any success in spite of all our admirable apparatus, a lubberly country urchin came down from the hills with a rod made from a branch of a tree, a few yards of twine, and, as Heaven shall help me!
Toiling in the midst of a dense thicket, among a tangle of dead leaves and twigs, she may well produce a very inaccurate piece of work; but compel her to labour when free from all impediment: she will then--I am convinced of it beforehand--apply her talents without constraint and show herself an adept in the building of graceful nests.