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LABOURING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Doing arduous or unpleasant work
Example:
toiling coal miners in the black deeps
Synonyms:
drudging; laboring; labouring; toiling
Classified under:
Similar:
busy (actively or fully engaged or occupied)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb labour
Context examples:
The heat I had contracted by coming very near the flames, and by labouring to quench them, made the wine begin to operate by urine; which I voided in such a quantity, and applied so well to the proper places, that in three minutes the fire was wholly extinguished, and the rest of that noble pile, which had cost so many ages in erecting, preserved from destruction.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
But none was made; and I became, at ten years old, a little labouring hind in the service of Murdstone and Grinby.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
She was always labouring, in secret, under this distress; and being delicate and downcast at the time of his last repulse—for it was not the first, by many—pined away and died.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
At the request of Traddles, most affectionate and devoted of friends in my trouble, we returned to Canterbury: I mean my aunt, Agnes, and I. We proceeded by appointment straight to Mr. Micawber's house; where, and at Mr. Wickfield's, my friend had been labouring ever since our explosive meeting.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I had not sat five minutes by the coffee-room fire, when the waiter, coming to stir it, as an excuse for talking, told me that two colliers had gone down, with all hands, a few miles away; and that some other ships had been seen labouring hard in the Roads, and trying, in great distress, to keep off shore.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
