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LABOURED
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Requiring or showing effort
Example:
the subject made for labored reading
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Similar:
effortful (requiring great physical effort)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Lacking natural ease
Example:
a labored style of debating
Synonyms:
labored; laboured; strained
Classified under:
Similar:
awkward (lacking grace or skill in manner or movement or performance)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Past simple / past participle of the verb labour
Context examples:
Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
The difficulties under which they had laboured all night, and which had found utterance in the most terrific gasps and snorts, are not to be conceived.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
There, the devoted postman on that beat delivered bushels of letters for me; and there, at intervals, I laboured through them, like a Home Secretary of State without the salary.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Every day of his life he had a long sitting at the Memorial, which never made the least progress, however hard he laboured, for King Charles the First always strayed into it, sooner or later, and then it was thrown aside, and another one begun.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
The books that Agnes and I had read together, were on their shelves; and the desk where I had laboured at my lessons, many a night, stood yet at the same old corner of the table.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
There were many things to be brought up from the beach and stored in the outhouse—as oars, nets, sails, cordage, spars, lobster-pots, bags of ballast, and the like; and though there was abundance of assistance rendered, there being not a pair of working hands on all that shore but would have laboured hard for Mr. Peggotty, and been well paid in being asked to do it, yet she persisted, all day long, in toiling under weights that she was quite unequal to, and fagging to and fro on all sorts of unnecessary errands.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
