Travail vs Laborious - What's the difference?

travail | laborious |

As a noun travail

is (archaic) arduous or painful exertion; excessive labor, suffering, hardship.

As a verb travail

is to toil.

As an adjective laborious is

requiring much physical effort; toilsome.

travail

English

Noun

(en-noun)

(archaic) Arduous or painful exertion; excessive labor, suffering, hardship.

* Hooker

As everything of price, so this doth require travail .

*, II.20:

*:Travell and pleasure, most unlike in nature, are notwithstanding followed together by a kind of I wot not what natural conjunction.

* 1936 , (Djuna Barnes), Nightwood , Faber & Faber 2007, p. 38:

He had thought of making a destiny for himself, through laborious and untiring travail .

Specifically, the labor of childbirth.

(obsolete, countable) An act of working; labor (US), labour (British).

(obsolete) The eclipse of a celestial object.

References

Verb

(en verb)

To toil.

* Latimer

slothful persons which will not travail for their livings

To go through the labor of childbirth.

* 1526 , William Tyndale, trans. Bible , John XIV:

A woman when she traveyleth hath sorowe, be cause her houre is come: but as sone as she is delivered off her chylde she remembreth no moare her anguysshe, for ioye that a man is borne in to the worlde.

laborious

English

Alternative forms

* labourious * laborous * labourous

Adjective

(en adjective)

Requiring much physical effort; toilsome.

Let us face it, our lives are miserable, laborious , and short.

Mentally difficult; painstaking

Industrious.

* Dryden

All with united force combine to drive / The lazy drones from the laborious hive.

Synonyms

* (requiring effort) painstaking, toilsome, worksome

Derived terms

* laboriously