Word.ws English Dictionary

laboring oar

laboring oar noun: an oar that is worked with great effort.

Noun

laboring oar (plural laboring oars)

  1. An oar that is worked with great effort.
  2. (US, broadly, figuratively) The part of a task that requires the greatest effort to achieve.
    • And so too, when new issues demanding new policy calls come up within that scheme, Congress presumably wants the same agency, rather than any court, to take the laboring oar.2019, Kisor v. Wilkie (U.S. Supreme Court No. 18-15), Justice Kagan

Forms of laboring oar

plurallaboring oars
alternative UKlabouring oar

Questions about laboring oar

What does laboring oar mean?
Laboring oar means an oar that is worked with great effort.
What part of speech is laboring oar?
Laboring oar is a noun.
What is the plural of laboring oar?
The plural of laboring oar is laboring oars.

Words near laboring oar in the dictionary

  1. laboresses
  2. laborforce
  3. laborforces
  4. Laborie
  5. laboring
  6. laboring oar
  7. laboring oars
  8. laboring the point
  9. laboringly
  10. laborings
  11. laboriosity

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: laboring oar (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:

Cite this entry: “laboring oar.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/laboring_oar. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.