Word.ws English Dictionary

laborous

laborous is the obsolete form of laborious.

Meaning of laborious

Adjective

laborious (comparative more laborious, superlative most laborious)

  1. 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...
  2. Mentally difficult; painstaking.
  3. 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...

Forms of laborous

comparativemore laborous
superlativemost laborous

Words formed from laborous

Questions about laborous

What is laborous the obsolete form of?
Laborous is the obsolete form of laborious.

Words near laborous in the dictionary

  1. laborists
  2. laborite
  3. laborites
  4. laborless
  5. laborlore
  6. laborous
  7. laborously
  8. labors
  9. labors of love
  10. labors the point
  11. laborsaving

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: laborous (page history and authors); laborious (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.

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