travail
/ˈtraveɪl
/literary
noun [mass noun] (also travails)
1Painful or laborious effort: advice for those who wish to save great sorrow and travail...
- And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.
- Springsteen often follows a songwriting strategy that dates back to songs such as ‘Badlands’, with verses full of travail, and choruses that ring with optimism.
- Today I'm just enormously grateful that such things exist and can be called upon in times of travail.
1.1Labour pains: a woman in travail...
- Anesthetics and antiseptics have manacled the demon pain, and the curse of travail has been lifted from the soul of women.
- Our hands wax feeble: anguish hath taken hold of us, and pain, as of a woman in travail.
- A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow.
verb [no object]
1Engage in painful or laborious effort: creation may travail in pain but it cannot escape its destiny...
- Paul knew he had to labour like a woman weary after hours of labour pains to effect new life in people: ‘I travail again in birth.’
1.1(Of a woman) be in labour.And they journeyed from Bethel; and there was but a little way to come to Ephrath: and Rachel travailed, and she had hard labour.
Origin
Middle English: via Old French from medieval Latin trepalium 'instrument of torture', from Latin tres 'three' + palus 'stake'.