n.
1 toil, (hard) work, travail, exertion, effort, laboriousness, strain, drudgery, pains, industry, slavery, donkey-work, Colloq sweat, grind, elbow-grease, Brit swot:
They know the labour involved in building a road.
2 employees, workers, wage-earners, labourers:
A meeting between labour and management is scheduled for today.
3 effort, task, job, chore, undertaking:
Raising funds for the museum was a labour of love.
4 travail, childbirth, parturition, labour pains, contractions, delivery:
She went into labour at midnight, and the twins were born just after four.
v.
5 work, toil, travail, drudge, strain, strive, struggle, slave, Colloq sweat, grind, Brit peg away (at), swot:
We laboured hard to get where we are today.
6 dwell on, overdo, overemphasize, harp on, overstress, strain, Colloq belabour:
I heard you the first time, so don't labour the point.
7 labour under. be burdened or troubled or distressed by, be deluded or deceived by, be disadvantaged by, suffer, endure:
He is labouring under a misapprehension. She labours under the impression that she will not be affected by a lack of education.
noun
1 work
ADJ.
manual, physical | forced, hard
He was sentenced to four years hard labour for his crime.
VERB + LABOUR
withdraw
The miners are threatening to withdraw their labour.
LABOUR + NOUN
market
an increasingly competitive labour market
2 workers
ADJ.
cheap | casual | skilled, unskilled | child, migrant, slave
It is thought that Stonehenge was built using slave labour.
LABOUR + NOUN
force
the size of the labour force
| cost/costs | relations
3 giving birth
ADJ.
difficult, easy | long, short
The baby was born after a long labour.
VERB + LABOUR
go into
She went into labour two weeks early.
| induce
Labour was induced when the baby was ten days overdue.
LABOUR + NOUN
room, ward | pains
PREP.
in ~
She was in labour for ten hours.
Random quote: Begin at once to live and count each separate day as a separate life.: Seneca
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