laborious

[luh-bawr-ee-uhs]

adjective

1. requiring much work, exertion, or perseverance.

   a laborious undertaking.

   Synonyms: wearisome, tiresome, hard, difficult, burdensome, onerous, arduous, toilsome

2. characterized by or requiring extreme care and much attention to detail.

   laborious research.

3. characterized by or exhibiting excessive effort, dullness, and lack of spontaneity; labored: labor.

   a strained, laborious plot.

4. given to or diligent in work.

   a careful, laborious craftsman.

   Synonyms: painstaking, sedulous, assiduous, industrious, hardworking

laborious

/ ləˈbɔːrɪəs /

adjective

1. involving great exertion or long effort

2. given to working hard

3. (of literary style, etc) not fluent

Other Word Forms

• laboriously adverb
• laboriousness noun
• quasi-laborious adjective
• superlaborious adjective
• superlaboriousness noun
• unlaborious adjective
• unlaboriousness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of laborious¹

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English word from Latin word labōriōsus. See labor, -ious

Example Sentences

The first step was the laborious process of completely surrounding the hull of the Mary Rose with a 117-foot-long and 49-foot-wide steel framework.

Read more on Literature

For much of the 20th century, financial modeling meant working with a rudimentary, laborious set of tools: eight-column ledger paper, mechanical adding machines or hand-held calculators.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Chef Mo, who owns a tiny hole-in-the-wall eatery in Jeonju, forages her own mushrooms on the mountainside, grows produce in her backyard and makes most of her laborious, time-intensive dishes from scratch.

Read more on Salon

Yamamoto admitted that a complete game was nowhere in his mind after such a laborious opening frame.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

On this night, though, Snell had nothing left — having failed to record a single 1-2-3 inning in what became his shortest start of the playoffs, five-plus innings that required 100 laborious pitches.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Related Words

• arduous 
• backbreaking 
• burdensome 
• onerous 
• strenuous 
• tiresome