laborer

American  

[lay-ber-er] / ˈleɪ bər ər /

noun

• laborers
  plural

1. a person engaged in work that requires bodily strength rather than skill or training.

   a laborer in the field.

2. any worker.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• underlaborer
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• laborers
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of laborer

Middle English word dating back to 1275–1325; see origin at labor, -er ¹

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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."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

laborer laborers

After returning to Bradford-on-Avon, Byfield initially supported himself as a farm laborer.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 7, 2026

What to know: Two couples’ lives are messily intertwined when one—a wealthy woman with an even wealthier husband—taps the other—a laid-off laborer and his wife—to be the subjects of a documentary.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 7, 2026

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

Grandfather Harry Tallis was the son of a farm laborer who, for some reason, had changed his name from Cartwright and whose birth and marriage were not recorded.

From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan

When the 380-foot steamship Great Republic—one of the world’s largest passenger vessels at the time—arrived in San Francisco from Hong Kong, 1,300 blue-coated Chinese laborers filed down its gangplank.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026

North Korean workers in Russia typically live in dormitories next to production facilities, said Alisa Svitova, a 21-year-old student who worked this year as an interpreter for North Korean laborers in Russian agricultural factories.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026

Parton could have limited her tracks to farmers, coal miners, swing shifters, assembly line workers and other laborers whom country music constantly lionizes, and no one would have complained.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 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

Into these rooms he and his family moved, and the laborers, with Ching at their head, lived in the old house in front.

From "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck

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Related Words

• hand
• manual worker
• worker

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