Word.ws English Dictionary

travailous

travailous adjective: causing or involving travail; laborious; toilsome.

Adjective

travailous (comparative more travailous, superlative most travailous)

  1. (archaic, literary) Causing or involving travail; laborious; toilsome.
    • […] of my redemption thence, / And portance in travailous history,c. 1603–1604, William Shakespeare, edited by Michael Neill, Othello, the Moor of Venice (Oxford World's Classics), Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, published 2008, →ISBN, →OCLC, [Act I...
    • A pined and jaded man he was before his middle days, and unlikely to live to full age. Better his mother had been barren, than that her womb should have borne such a sorry travailous life!1888, Charles M[ontagu] Doughty, chapter III, in Travels in Arabia Deserta, London: Jonathan Cape Ltd. & The Medici Society Limited, page 59
    Synonyms:
    travailsome

Synonyms of travailous

Forms of travailous

comparativemore travailous
superlativemost travailous

Origin of travailous

From Middle English travailous (“laborious, wearisome”), from Anglo-Norman travaillous, Old French travaillos (“tiring, painful”). Equivalent to travail + -ous.

Questions about travailous

What does travailous mean?
Travailous means causing or involving travail; laborious; toilsome.
What part of speech is travailous?
Travailous is an adjective.

Words near travailous in the dictionary

  1. travailed
  2. travailest
  3. travaileth
  4. travailing
  5. travailings
  6. travailous
  7. travails
  8. travailsome
  9. travallies
  10. travally
  11. Travancore

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: travailous (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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