labour — OET · Shobdo

labour

noun

1 the aristocratic disdain for manual labour:

work, toil, employment, exertion, industry, industriousness, toiling, hard work, hard labour, drudgery, effort, the sweat of one's brow, donkey work, menial work;

informal slog, grind, sweat, elbow grease;

British, informal graft;

archaic travail, moil.

▷antonyms rest, leisure, ease, idleness.

2 the conflict of interest between capital and labour:

workers, employees, workmen, workforce, staff, working people, blue-collar workers, hands, labourers, labour force, hired hands, proletariat, wage-earners, manpower, human resources, personnel;

humorous liveware.

▷antonyms management.

3 the labours of Hercules:

task, job, chore, undertaking, mission, commission, assignment.

4 Gina had a long and difficult labour:

childbirth, birth, birthing, delivery, nativity;

contractions, labour pains, labour pangs, labour throes;

technical parturition;

archaic confinement, accouchement, lying-in, childbed, travail.

verb

1 a project on which he had laboured for many years:

work (hard), toil, slave (away), grub away, plod away, grind away, sweat away, struggle, strive, exert oneself, overwork, work one's fingers to the bone, work like a Trojan/dog/slave, keep one's nose to the grindstone;

informal slog away, kill oneself, plug away, put one's back into something, peg away;

British, informal graft;

archaic drudge, travail, moil.

▷antonyms rest, relax, laze.

2 Newcastle laboured to break down the home team's defence:

strive, struggle, endeavour, work, try hard, make every effort, do one's best, do one's utmost, do all one can, give (it/something) one's all, go all out, fight, push, be at pains, put oneself out, apply oneself, exert oneself;

informal bend/fall/lean over backwards, give it one's best shot, pull out all the stops.

3 enough has been said, and there is no need to labour the point:

overemphasize, belabour, overstress, place/lay too much emphasis on, overdo, strain, over-elaborate, overplay, attach too much importance/weight to, make too much of, exaggerate, dwell on, harp on (about), expound on, expand.

4 Rex was labouring under a misapprehension:

suffer from, be a victim of, be burdened by, be overburdened by, be disadvantaged by, be under.

choose the right word	labour, work, toil
See work.

labour Oxford Dictionary of English