Word.ws English Dictionary

travails

travails is the plural of travail.

travails is the third-person singular simple present indicative of travail.

Meaning of travail

Noun

travail (plural travails or travaux)

  1. (literary) Arduous or painful exertion; excessive labor, suffering, hardship.
    • Great trauail is created to al men, and an heauie yoke vpon the children of Adam, from the day of their comming forth of their mothers wombe, vntil the day of their burying, into the mother of al. […]1582 – 1610, Douay Rheims Bible, Book of Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Sirach) XL.1–11
    Synonyms:
    toil, tribulation, ordeal
    Antonyms:
    ease, leisure
  2. Specifically, the labor of childbirth.
    • The lady shrieks and, well-a-near,
      Does fall in travail with her fear.c. 1607–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, [George Wilkins?], The Late, and Much Admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. […], London: […] [William White and Thomas Creede] for Henry...
  3. (countable, obsolete) An act of working; labor (US), labour (British).
  4. (obsolete) The eclipse of a celestial object.

See all 6 meanings of travail

Questions about travails

What is travails the plural of?
Travails is the plural of travail.

Words near travails in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: travails (page history and authors); travail (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: “travails.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/travails. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.