laboriously
Americanadverb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of laboriously
Explanation
When it takes a huge, slow effort to do something, you do it laboriously. For some students, math is a breeze — others have to study laboriously for every quiz. Whether you're exerting yourself physically or mentally, if it takes a lot of effort and time, you're working laboriously. Landscapers laboriously hefting heavy stones will groan and sweat, while chess players laboriously planning several moves ahead might just furrow their brows with the effort. This adverb comes from labor and its Latin root meaning "toil, exertion, or hardship."
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.
Each was a career politician who spent decades laboriously climbing the government rungs before being elected governor.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 10, 2026
I suppose I could disable all these notices, laboriously one by one.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 30, 2026
The garden's collection has been laboriously reassembled after it had perished during World War II -- through decades of purchases, exchanges and numerous scientific missions that took Ivannikov's senior colleagues across several continents.
From Barron's ● Feb. 12, 2026
She worked at the Harvard College Observatory as a “human computer,” laboriously measuring the positions and brightness of thousands of stars on photographic plates.
From Salon ● Feb. 14, 2025
Sometimes she made what she had named Weg Geschnissen, which laboriously translated meant something made with bread bits that usually would be thrown away.
From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith
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.
