Laboured

//ˈleɪ.bɚd// adj, verb

adj, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    simple past and past participle of labour form-of, participle, past
Adjective
  1. 1
    Expressive of strenuous effort. UK

    "At the end of the marathon, her laboured breathing told us she was exhausted."

  2. 2
    Of writing or speech or similar, stilted or not natural due to too much effort being used in the production. UK
Adjective
  1. 1
    requiring or showing effort wordnet
  2. 2
    lacking natural ease wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
effortfulheavylaboredlaboredstiltedstrained

Example

More examples

"The slogan "Arbeit macht frei" at the gates of the Nazi concentration camps was entirely cynical. The prisoners who believed the deceitful promise that work would set them free had no real chance of freedom, regardless of how much they laboured. Many of them were worked to death; many more were deliberately exterminated."

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.