travail
Americannoun
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travails
plural
verb (used without object)
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travails,
present (3rd person singular)
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travailed,
past participle, past
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travailing
present participle
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to suffer the pangs of childbirth; be in labor.
-
to toil or exert oneself.
noun
-
painful or excessive labour or exertion
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the pangs of childbirth; labour
verb
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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travailsimple
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travailssimple
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have travailedperfect
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has travailedperfect
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am travailingprogressive
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are travailingprogressive
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is travailingprogressive
-
have been travailingperfect progressive
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has been travailingperfect progressive
Past
-
travailedsimple
-
had travailedperfect
-
was travailingprogressive
-
were travailingprogressive
-
had been travailingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of travail
1200–50; (v.) Middle English travaillen < Old French travaillier to torment < Vulgar Latin *trepaliāre to torture, derivative of Late Latin trepālium torture chamber, literally, instrument of torture made with three stakes ( see tri-, pale 2); (noun) Middle English < Old French: suffering, derivative of travailler
Explanation
If you’ve had to bust your behind, burn the midnight oil, and shed blood, sweat, and tears to get where you are today, you could say you’ve endured significant travail. In other words, back-breakingly hard mental exertion or physical labor. Travail comes to us from a sinister Latin word: trepalium, meaning “instrument of torture.” The closest English word is probably toil, though travail means you’re not just exerting monumental effort but suffering as you do so. If your life has been hard-knock enough to be the stuff of old blues songs or Shakespearean tragedies, you’ve had your share of travails. In French, incidentally, travail simply means "work." The Spanish trabajo, "work," is closely related.
Vocabulary lists containing travail
"The Odyssey," Vocabulary from Part 1 of the epic poem
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "T"
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Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
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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:
The author of the novel “Good Company” on tales of travail from Edith Wharton, Elena Ferrante and others.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026
Physical travail being an inexhaustible source of black comedy and a recurring metaphor for the human condition in Beckett’s writing, the depiction of mortal decline is on point.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 9, 2024
Mulaney's second personal travail – which he does not address at all – was his highly publicized divorce from Anna-Marie Tendler and subsequent relationship with Olivia Munn with whom he had a child.
From Salon ● May 3, 2023
He has already endured five decades of political travail and far worse from life.
From New York Times ● Jan. 28, 2020
He spoke in the old-fashioned talk, and said with a full voice: “Sir, grant mercy of your great travail that ye have had this day for me and for my Queen.”
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
That and oil price buoyancy pushed the peso up 10% against the dollar this year despite budgetary travails.
From Barron's ● Jun. 22, 2026
You can be scared into saving by reading the travails of a person who has realized that they’ve been left behind with Social Security and little else.
From MarketWatch ● May 13, 2026
But Ohio One’s travails argue for a stable and friendly business climate to attract investment instead of rolling “out the red carpet for any one particular business,” as Mr. Lawson puts it.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 6, 2026
Any success for England coach Brendon McCullum at this tournament has come with the caveat of the winter's Ashes travails in Australia.
From BBC ● Mar. 4, 2026
The words must have elicited from Poillon a knowing, if wry, smile; in the midst of his travails, Lawrence was looking ahead to the time when the cyclotron’s inconstancy would be merely a quaint memory.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
English translations of the Bible often use it in this context, such as in Isaiah 66:7: “Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child.”
From Washington Post ● Oct. 10, 2020
It be like knowing you are what praying women had in mind when they travailed for tomorrow.
From "Watch Us Rise" by Renée Watson and Ellen Hagan
She waved not a hand, fluttered no kerchief of farewell, only stood sadly watching the sons with whom she had travailed, like one who watches the dear dead borne to their last resting-place.
From The Black Douglas by Richards, Frank
The priest having read the text as chance might lead him, read the vespers for Sunday;—and you must know he travailed hard, that the offerings should be worth something to him.
From Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers by Clouston, William Alexander
Do it not, I beseech thee, by Pelops thy grandsire, and Atreus thy father, and this my mother, who travailed in childbirth of me, and now travaileth again in her sorrow.
From Stories from the Greek Tragedians by Church, Alfred John
The voice of the travailing earth played on her strung nerves as if they had been banjo-strings.
From The Furnace by Macaulay, Rose, Dame
All that the war can mean for them was summarized long ago by the man who saw the "whole creation groaning and travailing in pain together until now."
From Religious Perplexities by Jacks, L. P. (Lawrence Pearsall)
So in the most melancholy strains of his music one who heeds well may detect the presence of a lofty ideal that uplifts and strengthens the travailing soul.
From For Every Music Lover A Series of Practical Essays on Music by Moore, Aubertine Woodward
Why this groaning and travailing of the creature?
From A Short History of Greek Philosophy by Marshall, John
And while the brain that was to rule France as a tribune-king, was thus evolving its idle progeny, the womb of a Corsican woman near him was travailing with him who was to be Napoleon!
From Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. by Various
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.
