Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Work, especially when arduous or involving painful effort; toil. synonym: work.
  • noun Tribulation or agony; anguish.
  • noun The labor of childbirth.
  • intransitive verb To work strenuously; toil.
  • intransitive verb To be in the labor of childbirth.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To labor; toil; travel: same as travel, 1.
  • To labor in childbed; suffer the pangs of childbirth; be parturient.
  • noun Labor; toil; travel: same as travel, 1.
  • noun Labor in childbed; parturition.
  • noun A means of transportation, commonly used by North American Indians and voyageurs of the north and northwest, for the conveyance of goods or of sick or wounded persons.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Same as travois.
  • noun Labor with pain; severe toil or exertion.
  • noun Parturition; labor.
  • transitive verb obsolete To harass; to tire.
  • intransitive verb Archaic To labor with pain; to toil.
  • intransitive verb To suffer the pangs of childbirth; to be in labor.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Obsolete form of travel.
  • verb To toil.
  • verb To go through the labor of childbirth.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun concluding state of pregnancy; from the onset of contractions to the birth of a child
  • noun use of physical or mental energy; hard work
  • verb work hard

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French, from travailler, to work hard, from Vulgar Latin *tripāliāre, to torture with a tripalium, from Late Latin tripālium, instrument of torture, probably from Latin tripālis, having three stakes : tri-, tri- + pālus, stake; see pag- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French travail ("suffering, torment").

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Examples

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  • "2. To labor in childbed; suffer the pangs of childbirth; be parturient." --Cent. Dict.

    May 25, 2011