hard labor

noun

1. compulsory labor imposed upon criminals in addition to imprisonment, generally not exceeding ordinary labor in severity or amount.

Word History and Origins

Origin of hard labor¹

First recorded in 1850–55

Example Sentences

It takes sustained hard labor.

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Daddy wanted his sons’ existence to be easier than his own life of hard labor.

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While studying at what would become the University of Manchester, he stole money from fellow classmates, was dismissed from the school and then sentenced to a month of hard labor in a local jail.

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After the war, Faÿ was sentenced to a lifetime of hard labor, but he escaped from prison in 1951 dressed in ecclesiastical costume, with the help of—here one reaches for the phrase “incredible but true”—Toklas.

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But he was “cut to the bone with hard labor,” wrote Carl Van Doren, one of his biographers, and his “Autobiography” promoted the belief that any American, through diligent labor and discipline, could prosper and advance and keep reinventing himself.

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