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.
Rather, they meant to establish what Lincoln called a “standard maxim for free society,” which should be constantly looked to, labored for and more nearly approximated.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 16, 2026
Last Thanksgiving, Megan Thee Stallion labored for days to prepare an elaborate holiday dinner for then-boyfriend Klay Thompson and his family.
From Salon • Apr. 30, 2026
Initially intriguing, the jumbled chronology eventually proves to be largely decorative until a disappointing late-reel twist explains why the labored device was deployed in the first place.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 26, 2026
Another concerned a sort of command center where workers labored “to make the internet as bad as we can possibly get it.”
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 23, 2026
Camarada Paixão Paishon, who had proved his mettle working in the wilderness for Rondon’s Telegraph Commission, labored so hard that his trousers were shredded.
From "Death on the River of Doubt" by Samantha Seiple
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.
