Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home 		English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Labour   /lˈeɪbˌaʊr/  /lˈeɪbər/   Listen
noun
Labor  n.  (Written also labour)  
1.
Physical toil or bodily exertion, especially when fatiguing, irksome, or unavoidable, in distinction from sportive exercise; hard, muscular effort directed to some useful end, as agriculture, manufactures, and like; servile toil; exertion; work. "God hath set Labor and rest, as day and night, to men Successive."
2.
Intellectual exertion; mental effort; as, the labor of compiling a history.
3.
That which requires hard work for its accomplishment; that which demands effort. "Being a labor of so great a difficulty, the exact performance thereof we may rather wish than look for."
4.
Travail; the pangs and efforts of childbirth. "The queen's in labor, They say, in great extremity; and feared She'll with the labor end."
5.
Any pang or distress.
6.
(Naut.) The pitching or tossing of a vessel which results in the straining of timbers and rigging.
7.
A measure of land in Mexico and Texas.
8.
(Mining.) A stope or set of stopes. (Sp. Amer.)
Synonyms: Work; toil; drudgery; task; exertion; effort; industry; painstaking. See Toll.


labour  n.  Same as labor; British spelling. (Chiefly Brit.)


verb
Labor  v. i.  (past & past part. labored; pres. part. laboring)  (Written also labour)  
1.
To exert muscular strength; to exert one's strength with painful effort, particularly in servile occupations; to work; to toil. "Adam, well may we labor still to dress This garden."
2.
To exert one's powers of mind in the prosecution of any design; to strive; to take pains.
3.
To be oppressed with difficulties or disease; to do one's work under conditions which make it especially hard, wearisome; to move slowly, as against opposition, or under a burden; to be burdened; often with under, and formerly with of. "The stone that labors up the hill." "The line too labors, and the words move slow." "To cure the disorder under which he labored." "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
4.
To be in travail; to suffer the pangs of childbirth; to be in labor.
5.
(Naut.) To pitch or roll heavily, as a ship in a turbulent sea.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words


Share |




"Labour" Quotes from Famous Books



... to Heaven is, as it were, divided ingeniously among them. Schopenhauer is told off as a kind of librarian in the House of God, to sing the praises of the austere pleasures of the mind. Carlyle, as steward, undertakes the working department and eulogises a life of labour in the fields. Omar Khayyam is established in the cellar, and swears that it is the only room in the house. Even the blackest of pessimistic artists enjoys his art. At the precise moment that he has written some shameless and terrible indictment of Creation, his one ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... to press the point. Most readers know well enough what labour the just writing of history involves, and how excellent a type it is of that "making of a book" which art is, as I have said, imperilled by apathy at ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... called the Herbal, a title (i.e. Pen Ts'ao) which seems to have belonged to some book of the kind in pre-historic ages. The work under consideration was compiled by Li Shih-chen, who completed his task in 1578 after twenty-six years' labour. No fewer than eighteen hundred and ninety-two species of drugs, animal, vegetable and mineral, are dealt with, arranged under sixty-two classes in sixteen divisions; and eight thousand one hundred and sixty prescriptions are given in connexion with the various entries. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... which he could do toward making ready for the erection of that wished-for mill, and he felt confident the labour would not be useless, although performed so far in advance of ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis
... by the light of a single candle. Salemina turned her head a little aside, but there was a look on her face that repaid me for all my labour and anxiety, a look in which her forty years melted away and became as twenty, a look that was the outward and visible expression of the inward and spiritual youth that has always been hers; then she replied simply—"I told him what is true: that my life had been ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin


More quotes...


Copyright © 2025 e-Free Translation.com