Related Words
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.
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
In many years on dairy farms, the worker often labored for 10 hours with no breaks.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 17, 2026
The Eastern District of California said the time it spent reviewing her alleged misconduct was a “waste of limited time and judicial resources in a district that has labored under a longstanding caseload crisis.”
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 14, 2026
Lamarck labored professionally under the modest title of professor of insects and worms.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 20, 2026
At once they came, waves of them, one after another, and they labored separating and dividing, until what had been a confused mass lay all ordered, every seed with its kind.
From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton
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.
