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.
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to toil or exert oneself.
noun
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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. 6, 2026
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
“Woman Ironing,” she said, “is Picasso’s quintessential image of travail and fatigue.”
From New York Times ● Jan. 29, 2023
Hurston was a “keen strategist of racial deference,” and her views on America’s racial travail clashed with those of another project writer and seminal Black author, Richard Wright.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 8, 2021
And all this time, in travail, sobbing, gaining on the current, we rowed into the strait—Skylla to port and on our starboard beam Kharybdis, dire gorge of the salt sea tide.
From "The Odyssey" by Homer
That and oil price buoyancy pushed the peso up 10% against the dollar this year despite budgetary travails.
From Barron's ● Jun. 22, 2026
Over the last month while in hospice, Frank did a number of interviews with US media, commenting on his life's work, the current political mood and the travails of the left.
From BBC ● May 20, 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
The thoroughness with which Callanan, an Irish barrister by profession, treats these travails is the most attractive feature of his book.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 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
And it came to pass when she travailed, that the one put out his hand; and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came out first.
From Biblical Extracts Or, The Holy Scriptures Analyzed; Showing its Contradictions, Absurdities, and Immoralities by Robert Cooper
Nine days, according to Homer, Leto travailed with Apollo: but he was Apollo, lord of Song.
From On The Art of Reading by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
The early Church travailed in pain for the souls of dying men.
From The Art of Soul-Winning by J.W. Mahood
Here was a man who could not be tempted by honors, who refused remuneration for his services, and who against the greatest odds stood staunchly for everything which would help his travailing country.
From The History of Cuba, vol. 2 by Willis Fletcher Johnson
The agonies of a travailing age are culminating.
From Messages to America by Shoghi Effendi
Both are directly hastening the emergence of the spiritual World Order stirring in the womb of a travailing age.
From Messages to America by Shoghi Effendi
And she being with child, cried travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
From Biblical Extracts Or, The Holy Scriptures Analyzed; Showing its Contradictions, Absurdities, and Immoralities by Robert Cooper
Some purpose, in the stress Of travailing tongues, to birth finds not a way: What all would utter, none has wit to say.
From Etain the Beloved and Other Poems by James Henry Cousins
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.
