Synonym Usage
See elaborate.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of labored
Explanation
The adjective labored is used to describe something that is difficult or requires effort to perform. If you are pregnant with triplets by the ninth month your walking will be labored. The adjective labored can describe something that is lacking natural ease or style. If you have to recite Shakespeare and you do so haltingly or self-consciously, then you have given a labored performance. If you then become really nervous and start to hyperventilate during a recitation of Hamlet's soliloquy, you will have labored breathing.
Vocabulary lists containing labored
Five Feet Apart
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The Distance Between Us
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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
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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.
Thousands of Canadians labored through frigid conditions to build smelting pots and a hydropower plant to fuel them—in just 18 months.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 27, 2026
The noise of backhoes, cranes and bulldozers echoed across Colombia's quake-hit cities on Sunday as workers labored to remove rubble, though the chance of finding survivors was slim a week after the disaster.
From Barron's ● Aug. 17, 2026
With little formal education, Mulholland had left his native Ireland in his teens, worked steamer ships on the Great Lakes, labored in lumber camps and prospected for gold.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2026
Cooper has long labored with a bureaucratic disadvantage: he lacks the easy access that Caine has to the Oval Office.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026
For an hour they labored to keep the water from capsizing the Caird.
From "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" by Jennifer Armstrong
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
