la·bo·ri·ous

(lə-bôr′ē-əs)

adj.

1. Marked by or requiring long, hard work: spent many laborious hours on the project.

2. Hard-working; industrious.

[Middle English, from Old French laborieux, from Latin labōriōsus, from labor, labor.]

la·bo′ri·ous·ly adv.

la·bo′ri·ous·ness n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

laborious

(ləˈbɔːrɪəs)

adj

1. involving great exertion or long effort

2. given to working hard

3. (of literary style, etc) not fluent

laˈboriously adv

laˈboriousness n

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

la•bo•ri•ous

(ləˈbɔr i əs, -ˈboʊr-)

adj.

1. requiring much work, exertion, or perseverance: a laborious undertaking.

2. characterized by or exhibiting excessive effort; labored.

3. industrious.

[1350–1400; Middle English < Latin labōriōsus]

la•bo′ri•ous•ly, adv.

la•bo′ri•ous•ness, n.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Adj.

laborious - characterized by effort to the point of exhaustion; especially physical effort; "worked their arduous way up the mining valley"; "a grueling campaign"; "hard labor"; "heavy work"; "heavy going"; "spent many laborious hours on the project"; "set a punishing pace"

arduous, backbreaking, grueling, gruelling, operose, toilsome, punishing, hard, heavy

effortful - requiring great physical effort

laborious

adjective

1. hard, difficult, tiring, exhausting, wearing, tough, fatiguing, uphill, strenuous, arduous, tiresome, onerous, burdensome, herculean, wearisome, backbreaking, toilsome Keeping the garden tidy all year round can be a laborious task.
hard easy, effortless, light, easy-peasy (slang)

2. industrious, hard-working, diligent, tireless, persevering, painstaking, indefatigable, assiduous, unflagging, sedulous He was gentle and kindly, living a laborious life in his Paris flat.

3. (of literary style, etc.) forced, laboured, strained, ponderous, not fluent a laborious prose style
forced simple, natural

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

laborious

adjective

1. Requiring great or extreme bodily, mental, or spiritual strength:

arduous, backbreaking, burdensome, demanding, difficult, effortful, exacting, exigent, formidable, hard, heavy, onerous, oppressive, rigorous, rough, severe, taxing, tough, trying, weighty.

2. Not easy to do, achieve, or master:

arduous, difficult, hard, serious, tall, tough, uphill.

Translations

شاق، مُتْعِب، مُرْهِق

pracný

slidsom

aufwendig mühsam

ardu laborieux

erfiîur

faticoso laborioso gravoso

трудящийся

prácny

zahmetli zor

费力的

laborious

[ləˈbɔːrɪəs] ADJ [task, work, process] → laborioso; [written style] → farragoso, poco claro

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

laborious

[ləˈbɔːriəs] adj [task, job] → laborieux/euse

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

laborious

adj task, undertaking → mühsam, mühselig; style → schwerfällig, umständlich

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

laborious

[ləˈbɔːrɪəs] adj → faticoso/a, laborioso/a

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

labour

(American) labor (ˈleibə) noun

1. hard work. The building of the cathedral involved considerable labour over two centuries; People engaged in manual labour are often badly paid.

2. workmen on a job. The firm is having difficulty hiring labour.

3. (in a pregnant woman etc) the process of childbirth. She was in labour for several hours before the baby was born.

4. used (with capital) as a name for the Socialist party in the United Kingdom.

verb

1. to be employed to do hard and unskilled work. He spends the summer labouring on a building site.

2. to move or work etc slowly or with difficulty. They laboured through the deep undergrowth in the jungle; the car engine labours a bit on steep hills.

laborious (ləˈboːriəs) adjective

difficult; requiring hard work. Moving house is always a laborious process.

laˈboriously adverb

laˈboriousness noun

ˈlabourer noun

a workman who is employed to do heavy work requiring little skill. the labourers on a building site.

ˈlabour court noun

a court of law for settling disputes between management and workers.

ˈlabour dispute noun

a disagreement between management and workers about working conditions, pay etc.

ˈlabour-saving adjective

intended to lessen work. washing-machines and other labour-saving devices.

laborious

a. laborioso-a, trabajoso-a.

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

They were coeval with the coureurs des bois, or rangers of the woods, already noticed, and, like them, in the intervals of their long, arduous, and laborious expeditions, were prone to pass their time in idleness and revelry about the trading posts or settlements; squandering their hard earnings in heedless conviviality, and rivaling their neighbors, the Indians, in indolent indulgence and an imprudent disregard of the morrow.

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But you must be a thorough whaleman, to see these sights; and not only that, but if you wish to return to such a sight again, you must be sure and take the exact intersecting latitude and longitude of your first stand-point, else so chance-like are such observations of the hills, that your precise, previous stand-point would require a laborious re-discovery; like the Solomon islands, which still remain incognita, though once high-ruffed Mendanna trod them and old Figuera chronicled them.

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Could one have one's choice, the husbandmen should by all means be slaves, not of the same nation, or men of any spirit; for thus they would be laborious in their business, and safe from attempting any novelties: next to these barbarian servants are to be preferred, similar in natural disposition to these we have already mentioned.

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The rising unto place is laborious; and by pains, men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base; and by indignities, men come to dignities.

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You need no laborious steps to enter upon familiarity with them, and you can earn not only their confidence, but their gratitude, by turning an attentive ear to their discourse.

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These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river.

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The assiduous merchant, the laborious husbandman, the active mechanic, and the industrious manufacturer, -- all orders of men, look forward with eager expectation and growing alacrity to this pleasing reward of their toils.

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The most laborious task will be the proper inauguration of the government and the primeval formation of a federal code.

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But such sea-going has not the artistic quality of a single-handed struggle with something much greater than yourself; it is not the laborious absorbing practice of an art whose ultimate result remains on the knees of the gods.

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The physician with his theory, rather obtained from than corrected by experiments on the human constitution; the pious, self- denying, laborious, and ill-paid missionary; the half-educated, litigious, envious, and disreputable lawyer, with his counterpoise, a brother of the profession, of better origin and of better character; the shiftless, bargaining, discontented seller of his “betterments;” the plausible carpenter, and most of the others, are more familiar to all who have ever dwelt in a new country.

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Tess really wished to walk uprightly, while her father did nothing of the kind; but she resembled him in being content with immediate and small achievements, and in having no mind for laborious effort towards such petty social advancement as could alone be effected by a family so heavily handicapped as the once powerful d'Urbervilles were now.

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What elegant historian would neglect a striking opportunity for pointing out that his heroes did not foresee the history of the world, or even their own actions?--For example, that Henry of Navarre, when a Protestant baby, little thought of being a Catholic monarch; or that Alfred the Great, when he measured his laborious nights with burning candles, had no idea of future gentlemen measuring their idle days with watches.

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