travail

The author of the novel “Good Company” on tales of travail from Edith Wharton, Elena Ferrante and others.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026

Mulaney's second personal travail – which he does not address at all – was his highly publicized divorce from Anna-Marie Tendler and subsequent relationship with Olivia Munn with whom he had a child.

From Salon ● May 3, 2023

“Woman Ironing,” she said, “is Picasso’s quintessential image of travail and fatigue.”

From New York Times ● Jan. 29, 2023

Hurston was a “keen strategist of racial deference,” and her views on America’s racial travail clashed with those of another project writer and seminal Black author, Richard Wright.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 8, 2021

Never again will her life be free of travail and disappointment in her three blind mice.

From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver

It’s easy to forget that China’s present economic travails and diplomatic and strategic rivalries weren’t inevitable.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2026

That and oil price buoyancy pushed the peso up 10% against the dollar this year despite budgetary travails.

From Barron's ● Jun. 22, 2026

Over the last month while in hospice, Frank did a number of interviews with US media, commenting on his life's work, the current political mood and the travails of the left.

From BBC ● May 20, 2026

“Welcome to Wrexham,” the Emmy-winning docuseries that follows the tributes and travails of a lower-division soccer club in North Wales, isn’t a reality show.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 12, 2026

In a similar way, writers stop thinking—and thus stop writing— about tangible objects and instead refer to them by the role those objects play in their daily travails.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker

English translations of the Bible often use it in this context, such as in Isaiah 66:7: “Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child.”

From Washington Post ● Oct. 10, 2020

It be like knowing you are what praying women had in mind when they travailed for tomorrow.

From "Watch Us Rise" by Renée Watson and Ellen Hagan

For as soon as Zion travailed she brought forth her children.

From An Amicable Controversy with a Jewish Rabbi, on The Messiah's Coming by J. R. (John Ranicar) Park

Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed she brought forth her children.

From An Amicable Controversy with a Jewish Rabbi, on The Messiah's Coming by J. R. (John Ranicar) Park

Regeneration certainly hath a travailing pain within it, insomuch that Paul travailed in pain till it were accomplished in these, Gal. iv.

From The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning by Hugh Binning

There is a pause in the hurry, in the sorrow, of this travailing world; there is a hush.

From The Near East Dalmatia, Greece and Constantinople by Robert (Robert Smythe) Hichens

The vision of the one eternal, passionless Spirit, far removed from the world of chance and change and earthly soilure, was the conquest of Greek philosophy, travailing for 800 years.

From Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius by Samuel Dill

Yet it serves against its will, travailing as a woman in pain, with the supreme desire to be liberated from this service of the wicked, condemned world.

From Epistle Sermons, Vol. III Trinity Sunday to Advent by Martin Luther

Our pains were not small or light, but travailing daily from chamber to chamber.

From Hampton Court by E. W. Haslehust

After "travailing all winter long," sleeping on snow without shelter, and suffering other hardships, they reached Europe in June, 1247, where they were "rejoiced over as men that had been risen from death to life."

From Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) The Romance of Reality by Charles Morris