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.
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
“Woman Ironing,” she said, “is Picasso’s quintessential image of travail and fatigue.”
From New York Times ● Jan. 29, 2023
And I really do not think that America, adolescent and cocksure, a stranger to suffering and travail, an enemy of passion and sacrifice, is ready to probe into its most fundamental beliefs.
From "Black Boy" by Richard Wright
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
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
For older Angelenos who knew Lew Wasserman, watching the travails has called to mind one of the grandfather’s adages.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 21, 2026
She tells me about her recent medical travails, including, as she says, “my two fake hips and my fake knee.”
From "Drama High" by Michael Sokolove
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
I have groaned; I have travailed: I am weary.
From The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Vol. I by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
Listen, O people, over whom my heart yearns, as the heart of a mother over the children she has travailed for!
From Romola by Eliot, George
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
Regeneration certainly hath a travailing pain within it, insomuch that Paul travailed in pain till it were accomplished in these, Gal. iv.
From The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning by Binning, Hugh
At that very moment, Douglass, looking at a picture that should have logically thrilled him to the core, was travailing in a morose discontent quite incompatible with his environment.
From The Song of the Wolf by Mayer, Frank
And for great grief of her soul's travailing He gave consent she should endure in peace Till her life's end; yea, till her time should cease, She should abide in fellowship of pain.
From Poems & Ballads (First Series) by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
The role it is destined to play in hastening the emergence of the world order of Bahá’u’lláh, now stirring in the womb of this travailing age, cannot as yet be fathomed.
From Messages to America by Shoghi Effendi
Have also said, "It was," away back in the ages past, groaning and heaving, travailing, in great anxiety to be delivered.
From The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 by Walker, Aaron
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.
