La"bor (lā"bẽr), n. [OE.
labour, OF. labour, laber, labur, F.
labeur, L. labor; cf. Gr. lamba`nein to
take, Skr. labh to get, seize.] [Written also labour.]
1. Physical toil or bodily exertion, especially
when fatiguing, irksome, or unavoidable, in distinction from sportive
exercise; hard, muscular effort directed to some useful end, as
agriculture, manufactures, and like; servile toil; exertion;
work.
God hath set
Labor and rest, as day and night, to men
Successive.
Milton.
2. Intellectual exertion; mental effort; as,
the labor of compiling a history.
3. That which requires hard work for its
accomplishment; that which demands effort.
Being a labor of so great a difficulty, the
exact performance thereof we may rather wish than look
for.
Hooker.
4. Travail; the pangs and efforts of
childbirth.
The queen's in labor,
They say, in great extremity; and feared
She'll with the labor end.
Shak.
5. Any pang or distress.
Shak.
6. (Naut.) The pitching or tossing of
a vessel which results in the straining of timbers and
rigging.
7. [Sp.] A measure of land in Mexico and
Texas, equivalent to an area of 177⅐ acres.
Bartlett.
Syn. -- Work; toil; drudgery; task; exertion; effort;
industry; painstaking. See Toll.
La"bor, v. i. [imp. & p.
p. Labored (?); p. pr. & vb. n.
Laboring.] [OE. labouren, F. labourer, L.
laborare. See Labor, n.] [Written
also labour.] 1. To exert muscular
strength; to exert one's strength with painful effort, particularly
in servile occupations; to work; to toil.
Adam, well may we labor still to dress
This garden.
Milton.
2. To exert one's powers of mind in the
prosecution of any design; to strive; to take pains.
3. To be oppressed with difficulties or
disease; to do one's work under conditions which make it especially
hard, wearisome; to move slowly, as against opposition, or under a
burden; to be burdened; -- often with under, and formerly with
of.
The stone that labors up the hill.
Granville.
The line too labors,and the words move
slow.
Pope.
To cure the disorder under which he
labored.
Sir W. Scott.
Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest.
Matt. xi. 28
4. To be in travail; to suffer the pangs of
childbirth.
5. (Naut.) To pitch or roll heavily,
as a ship in a turbulent sea. Totten.
La"bor, v. t. [F. labourer, L.
laborare.] 1. To work at; to work; to
till; to cultivate by toil.
The most excellent lands are lying fallow, or only
labored by children.
W. Tooke.
2. To form or fabricate with toil, exertion,
or care. "To labor arms for Troy." Dryden.
3. To prosecute, or perfect, with effort; to
urge strenuously; as, to labor a point or argument.
4. To belabor; to beat. [Obs.]
Dryden.
La"bor, n. (Mining.) A
stope or set of stopes. [Sp. Amer.]