droil

From Dutch druil (“sluggard”). Compare droll.

• IPA^(key): /dɹɔɪl/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔɪl

droil (countable and uncountable, plural droils)

1. (obsolete) A drudge; a minion or servile worker.
   • 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

   • a. 1595, Robert Southwell, St. Peter's Complaint:

     Two homely droils were authors of my death

2. (obsolete) hard work; toil or drudgery.
   • 1880, Karl Knortz, ‎Otto Dickman, Modern American Lyrics:

     When the burden of daytime droil is o'er

droil (third-person singular simple present droils, present participle droiling, simple past and past participle droiled)

1. (obbsolete) To work sluggishly or slowly; to plod.

• “droil”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• lorid

droil

1. vocative/genitive singular of drol