Related Words
See elaborate.
Other Word Forms
- laboredly adverb
- laboredness noun
- unlabored adjective
- well-labored adjective
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.
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
They appeared to agree on Meta’s culpability by Friday, but labored through Tuesday to hash out a decision for Google, delivering their verdict just after 10 a.m.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 25, 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
The connection between Douglass’s fame, Assing’s death and the chemical composition of a poison might be somewhat labored, but Ms. Popova sells it as a portrait of cosmic interconnectedness.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 6, 2026
Yet he labored on, struggling up a long, dim slope.
From "A Wizard of Earthsea" by Ursula K. Le Guin
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.
