moil

Etymology 1

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”).

verb

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
   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. (intransitive) 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
3. (UK, transitive) To defile or dirty.

noun

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 2

Of unclear origin; possibly from French meule or Hebrew מוהל (mohel, “ritual circumciser”), referring to the foreskin-like shape of the unwanted rim.

noun

1. (glassblowing) 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. (glassblowing, blow molding) 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. (glassblowing) The metallic oxide from a blowpipe which has adhered to a glass object.