belabor
/bɪˈleɪ.bə/
belabor is the US spelling of belabour.
Meaning of belabour
Verb
belabour (third-person singular simple present belabours, present participle belabouring, simple past and past participle belaboured)
- To labour about; labour over; to work hard upon; to ply diligently.
- To beat or thump (someone) soundly.
- 1856: Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Part III Chapter X, translated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling
He saw the village; he was seen coming bending forward upon his horse, belabouring it with great blows, the girths dripping with blood.
- 1856: Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Part III Chapter X, translated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling
- To attack (someone) verbally.
- To discuss or explain (something) excessively or repeatedly; to harp on or overelaborate.
- Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belabouring those problems which divide us.1961, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, inaugural speech
Forms of belabor
| third-person singular present | belabors |
|---|---|
| present participle | belaboring |
| past participle | belabored |
| past | belabored |
Origin of belabor
From be- (“on, upon, about, over”) + labor.
Words formed from belabor
Questions about belabor
- What is belabor the US spelling of?
- Belabor is the US spelling of belabour.
- How do you pronounce belabor?
- Belabor is pronounced /bɪˈleɪ.bə/ (UK).
Words near belabor in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: belabor (page history and authors); belabour (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-belabour.wav.
Cite this entry: “belabor.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/belabor. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.