LABORED • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Labored

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/lˈeɪbərd/ Listen

verb

Labor v. i. (past & past part. labored; pres. part. laboring) (Written also labour)

1.

To exert muscular strength; to exert one's strength with painful effort, particularly in servile occupations; to work; to toil. "Adam, well may we labor still to dress This garden."

2.

To exert one's powers of mind in the prosecution of any design; to strive; to take pains.

3.

To be oppressed with difficulties or disease; to do one's work under conditions which make it especially hard, wearisome; to move slowly, as against opposition, or under a burden; to be burdened; often with under, and formerly with of. "The stone that labors up the hill." "The line too labors, and the words move slow." "To cure the disorder under which he labored." "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

4.

To be in travail; to suffer the pangs of childbirth; to be in labor.

5.

(Naut.) To pitch or roll heavily, as a ship in a turbulent sea.

adjective

Labored adj.

1.

Bearing marks of labor and effort; elaborately wrought; not easy or natural; as, labored poetry; a labored style.

2.

Appearing to require strong effort; as, labored breathing.

Synonyms: heavy, laboured.

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Etymology of 'Labored'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Labored" Quotes from Famous Books

... unimproved land lying in the centre of a newly developing town. A storekeeper offers him a thousand dollars a year for the privilege of placing a store on the land. The owner of the land need make no exertion. He simply holds his title. Here a man has labored for twenty years and saved ten thousand dollars by denying himself the necessaries of life. He invests the money in railroad bonds, and someone insists he thereby serves society. In one sense he does serve. In another, and a larger ...

— International Finance • Hartley Withers

... tried in various ways to amuse the wayward child. He really was not well, and felt cross and irritable, and nothing that his little sister could do to please him would succeed. With the utmost patience and gentleness she labored to bring a smile to her little brother's cheek, or at least so to win his attention as to keep him from disturbing her mother. But the handkerchief rabbits, and the paper men and women she could cut so beautifully, and which at times gave little Lewie so much pleasure, ...

— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely

... young man earnestly, "I have only the good of Lutha in my heart. For three weeks I have labored and risked death a hundred times to place the legitimate heir to the crown of Lutha ...

— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... its proper place a manuscript quadrature (3.1416 exactly) addressed to an eminent mathematician, dated in 1842 from the debtor's ward of a country gaol. The unfortunate speculator says, "I have labored many years to find the precise ratio." I have heard of several cases in which squaring the circle has produced an inability to square accounts. I remind those who feel a kind of inspiration to employ native genius upon difficulties, without gradual progression from elements, that ...

— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... Virginia Friend, whose acquaintance he had made at Yearly Meeting,—and seated himself in the arm-chair beside the stove. Martha, at the west window, enjoyed a volume of Hannah More, and Miss Betsy, at the front window, labored over the Psalms. The sun shone with dim, muffled orb, but the air without was mild, and there were already brown tufts, which would soon be ...

— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

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