laborious
/ləˈbɔːɹiəs/
laborious adjective: requiring much physical effort; toilsome.
Adjective
laborious (comparative more laborious, superlative most laborious)
- Requiring much physical effort; toilsome.
- Let us face it, our lives are miserable, laborious, and short.1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter I, in Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962...
- The coal is then transferred to broad-gauge wagons for transport to Dublin. The transhipment is a rather laborious business, the coal being shovelled by hand from one wagon to another.1951 May, R. K. Kirkland, “The Cavan & Leitrim Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 343
- Synonyms:
- painstaking, toilsome, worksome, painful
- Mentally difficult; painstaking.
- Industrious.
- All, with united Force, combine to drive / The lazy Drones from the laborious Hive.1697, Virgil, “The Fourth Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 129...
laborious meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Malayalam
laborious in Hindi
- laborious
- मेहनती mehnatī
laborious in Tamil
- கடினமான, சலியாதுழைக்கும், நீடித்த உழைப்பு வேண்டிய, வருந்தி உழைக்கத்தக்க, விடாதுழைக்கின்ற, விடாதுழைக்கிற
laborious in Urdu
- laborious
- محنتی mihnatī
laborious in Malayalam
- കഠിനാദ്ധ്വാനം ആവശ്യമായ, ഒഴുക്കില്ലാത്ത
More languagesFewer languages
- laborious in Kannada
- ಪ್ರಯಾಸದ, ಶ್ರಮದ, ದುಡಿಮೆಯ, ತೊಂದರೆಯ
Examples of laborious in a sentence
- The mute swan, being one of the world's heaviest flying birds, can have a laborious takeoff.
- Aquatint is a laborious process that involves acids and resistants and emphasizes tone over line.
- Laborious experiment to discover the facts about our environment is wearisome to all but a persistent few.
Synonyms of laborious
Forms of laborious
| comparative | more laborious |
|---|---|
| superlative | most laborious |
| alternative form (obsolete) | labourious |
| alternative form (obsolete) | laborous |
| alternative form (obsolete) | labourous |
Origin of laborious
From Old French laborios, from Latin laboriosus. By surface analysis, labor + -ious
Words formed from laborious
Words that rhyme with laborious
- glorious
- notorious
- uproarious
- censorious
- memorious
- inglorious
- unglorious
- victorious
- amatorious
- deletorious
- desultorious
- maritorious
12 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about laborious
- What does laborious mean?
- Laborious means requiring much physical effort; toilsome.
- What is laborious in Hindi?
- Laborious in Hindi is मेहनती (mehnatī). See Laborious meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is laborious?
- Laborious is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce laborious?
- Laborious is pronounced /ləˈbɔːɹiəs/.
Words near laborious in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: laborious (page history and authors); मेहनती (Hindi) (page history and authors); laborious (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); محنتی (Urdu) (page history and authors); laborious (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); laborious (Kannada Wiktionary) (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-laborious.wav, en-us-laborious.ogg.
Cite this entry: “laborious.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/laborious. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.