travail
Americannoun
verb (used without object)
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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
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have been travailingperfect progressive
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has been travailingperfect progressive
Past
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travailedsimple
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had travailedperfect
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was travailingprogressive
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were travailingprogressive
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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.
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
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
Nobody thinks they’re celebrating the success of the Normandy invasion, but these are still truly giddy occasions amid the usual annals of human travail.
From Washington Post • Oct. 11, 2019
And I awoke, and I knew that my brother was in travail.
From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2019
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
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.
