verb
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(tr) to make (a liquid) cloudy or turbid by stirring up dregs or sediment
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(intr) (esp of a liquid) to be agitated or disturbed
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dialect (intr) to be noisy or boisterous
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(tr) another word (now rare) for rile
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of roil
First recorded in 1580–90; origin uncertain
Explanation
To roil means to stir up or churn. A stormy ocean might roil, or even a restless crowd. The word roil is often confused with rile, which has a slightly different meaning. If you roil someone you're stirring them up but not necessarily annoying them. To rile someone is to deliberately provoke or antagonize them. Usually there's no roiling without riling. Muhammad Ali roiled much of America when he refused to be drafted for the Vietnam War.
Vocabulary lists containing roil
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Appeared in the December 2, 2025, print edition as 'Questions About NATO’s Future Roil Europe'.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 2, 2025
“Every region in the country wants its own AVE, whether they need it or not,” says Ricard Roil, president of the Barcelona-based Association to Promote Public Transportation.
From Time • Jul. 29, 2013
"Vive le Roil Vive la France!" cried a throng of French and Brazilian Royalists, some of them poor people who had come all the way to Palermo at great personal sacrifice.
From Time Magazine Archive
At the height of this confusion Edward VII arrived, almost went unnoticed until Mortier, shouting "Vive le Roil" ran back and forth crying, "I have two kings!"
From Time Magazine Archive
Roil, roil, v.t. to render turbid: to vex: to rile: to salt fish with a machine called a Roil′er—also Royle.—adj.
From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 3 of 4: N-R) by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
