labored
- done or made with difficulty; heavy: labored breathing.
- exhibiting a great deal of effort; lacking grace, fluency, or spontaneity: a labored prose style.
Origin of labored
Synonym study
Synonyms
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labor
- productive activity, especially for the sake of economic gain.
- the body of persons engaged in such activity, especially those working for wages.
- this body of persons considered as a class (distinguished from management and capital).
- physical or mental work, especially of a hard or fatiguing kind; toil.
- a job or task done or to be done.
- the physical effort and periodic uterine contractions of childbirth.
- the interval from the onset of these contractions to childbirth.
- (initial capital letter) Also called Labor Department. Informal. the Department of Labor.
- to perform labor; exert one's powers of body or mind; work; toil.
- to strive, as toward a goal; work hard (often followed by for): to labor for peace.
- to act, behave, or function at a disadvantage (usually followed by under): to labor under a misapprehension.
- to be in the actual process of giving birth.
- to roll or pitch heavily, as a ship.
- to develop or dwell on in excessive detail: Don't labor the point.
- to burden or tire: to labor the reader with unnecessary detail.
- British Dialect. to work or till (soil or the like).
- of or relating to workers, their associations, or working conditions: labor reforms.
Origin of labor
Synonyms
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Related Words
contrivedawkwardarduousstrainedponderousclumsyforcedstudiedaffectedoverdonehardheavyineptmaladroitoperoseoverwroughtstiffstrenuoustoilsomeunnaturalExamples from the Web for labored
Contemporary Examples
That was a very long, labored death scene, which worked very well in the end.
Others held him up as a great statesman who labored for international peace.
Rarely in modern history have so many in Washington labored so hard and produced so little.
Washington Is Waiting for Godot as President Obama’s Second-Term Agenda StallsHoward Kurtz
April 9, 2013
One has a black pixie haircut that must have been labored over for hours in a salon, or it could be a wig.
Bin Laden, Zawahiri, and their associates were caught off guard by the storm and have labored to understand its impact.
Historical Examples
But on the first two and greatest articles of his creed, how Jasper labored!
Way of the LawlessMax Brand
On her thwarts two figures, dipping and rising, labored with the sweeps.
The Black BagLouis Joseph Vance
He and Tom labored like Trojans to take off the wheel, and put on the other.
Tom Swift and his Electric RunaboutVictor Appleton
These damned New Yorkers had no idea of the pressure under which he labored.
Reel Life FilmsSamuel Kimball Merwin
At the same time he labored assiduously in other directions.
labor
- the US spelling of labour
Word Origin and History for labored
adj.
also laboured, "learned," mid-15c., past participle adjective from labor (v.). Meaning "done with much labor" is from c.1600.
labor
n.
c.1300, "a task, a project;" later "exertion of the body; trouble, difficulty, hardship" (late 14c.), from Old French labor "labor, toil, work, exertion, task" (12c., Modern French labeur), from Latin laborem (nominative labor) "labor, toil, exertion; hardship, pain, fatigue; a work, a product of labor," of uncertain origin, perhaps originally from the notion of "tottering under a burden," and related to labere "to totter."
Meaning "body of laborers considered as a class" (usually contrasted to capitalists) is from 1839. Sense of "physical exertions of childbirth" is 1590s, earlier labour of birthe (early 15c.), a sense also found in Old French, and cf. French en travail "in (childbirth) suffering" (see travail). Labor Day first marked 1882 in New York City.
labor
v.
late 14c., "perform manual or physical work; work hard; keep busy; take pains, strive, endeavor" (also "copulate"), from Old French laborer "work, toil; struggle, have difficulty," from Latin laborare, from labor (see labor (n.)). The verb in modern French, Spanish, Portuguese means "to plow;" the wider sense being taken by the equivalent of English travail. Sense of "to endure pain, suffer" is early 15c., especially in phrase labor of child. Related: Labored; laboring.
labor
(lā′bər)- The physical efforts of expulsion of the fetus and the placenta from the uterus during parturition.
- To undergo the efforts of childbirth.
labor
- The process by which the birth of a mammal occurs, beginning with contractions of the uterus and ending with the expulsion of the fetus and the placenta.