laborer
Americannoun
-
laborers
plural
-
a person engaged in work that requires bodily strength rather than skill or training.
a laborer in the field.
-
any worker.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of laborer
Middle English word dating back to 1275–1325; see origin at labor, -er 1
Explanation
A laborer is a worker, especially a person who does some kind of physical work. A stone mason is a laborer, but you probably wouldn't call a poet a laborer. In the old days, the word laborer implied an unskilled or menial worker, like a day laborer on a farm who might be hired at an hourly rate to haul rocks out of a field, or a street paver's assistant. Today, a laborer is thought of as someone who works with her hands, often outside. Laborer comes from labor, in Old French "work, exertion, or task," from the Latin laborem, "toil, exertion, or fatigue."
Vocabulary lists containing laborer
The Industrial Revolution - Introductory
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The Industrial Revolution - Middle School and High School
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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.
See Examples For:
According to tradition, Caedmon worked as a laborer at Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire.
From Science Daily ● May 17, 2026
This laborer wants to know what you mean by labor becoming tokenized.
From Barron's ● Mar. 27, 2026
All of which brings us back to the scene with the Chinese laborer, and the symbolism of losing the person on the other end of the saw, rendering it useless.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 5, 2025
Tincher was now a manual laborer on one leg, but he was denied disability benefits by the Social Security Administration the following year.
From Salon ● Nov. 2, 2025
Rather it was at that moment I realized that I was fooling myself if I expected a few weeks of labor to gain me admission to the world of the laborer.
From "Hunger of Memory" by Richard Rodriguez
The lives of servants and laborers can be difficult to reconstruct.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
From the fourth century to the 14th—when sea travel gradually replaced overland caravans—merchants, laborers, religious leaders, and government officials from across Eurasia convened there to exchange goods and culture.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 31, 2026
“People are talking about the future of day laborers, the future of immigrants, and immigrants are not in the discussion,” Alvarado said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 26, 2026
Day laborers crowded around notepads during the discussions, encouraged to openly debate on what they need to ensure their own safety while seeking work.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 26, 2026
Most of the jobs remaining at the dam site, he had been told, were for common laborers, paying fifty cents an hour.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
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.
