labor
Usage
What are other ways to say labor?
Labor particularly denotes hard manual work: backbreaking labor; arduous labor. Drudgery suggests continuous, dreary, and dispiriting work, especially of a menial or servile kind: the drudgery of household tasks. Toil suggests wearying or exhausting labor: toil that breaks down the worker's health. Work is the general word and may apply to exertion that is either easy or hard: fun work; heavy work.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Without that labor force, he said, contaminated goods can keep being shipped.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 18, 2026
Prior to the school board’s June approval of the new labor contracts, the Duardo issued “express written warnings” that the “agreements were not affordable,” she recounted in her letter.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 17, 2026
On May 22, detainees at Delaney Hall launched a hunger and labor strike at the facility, capturing national attention to what they described as inhumane conditions in the facility.
From Salon ● Jul. 17, 2026
On the other: a shrinking labor market, tepid consumer spending and a real estate slump with no end in sight.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 16, 2026
When my mother was pregnant, right up until the time of labor, she would go out and do chores.
From "Facing the Lion" by Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton and Herman Viola
At Schaeffler, Digit labors alone inside a Plexiglas cage, moving baskets for four hours, recharging over lunch, then going again for another four hours.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 15, 2026
The box is carved with scenes of the labors of Hercules, while the lid is decorated with monumental reclining figures of the deceased.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 22, 2025
A friend gave her a wire bakers rack and Scott started to fill it with the fruits of her labors.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2025
"The Father rules, the Warrior fights, the Smith labors, and together they perform all that is rightful for a man," says Septon Meribald in "A Feast for Crows."
From Salon ● Aug. 10, 2024
He labors under an affliction in his speech, acquired through long habit of degradation or sudden excess of horror.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
Last Thanksgiving, Megan Thee Stallion labored for days to prepare an elaborate holiday dinner for then-boyfriend Klay Thompson and his family.
From Salon ● Apr. 30, 2026
The Eastern District of California said the time it spent reviewing her alleged misconduct was a “waste of limited time and judicial resources in a district that has labored under a longstanding caseload crisis.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 14, 2026
Another concerned a sort of command center where workers labored “to make the internet as bad as we can possibly get it.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 23, 2026
Lamarck labored professionally under the modest title of professor of insects and worms.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 20, 2026
There’s a pause, and the sound of my labored breath fills my ears, heartbeat keeping time to the seconds ticking by.
From "Dread Nation" by Justina Ireland
Still, he kept laboring toward a perfection he didn’t always reach but never despaired of reaching.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 7, 2026
You probably know it already — you’ve seen oil pumpjacks laboring away in nutty places, like on the La Cienega Boulevard shortcut through Baldwin Hills to the airport.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 26, 2026
Montiel, 62, said Chavez’s legacy continues to reverberate as the union has pushed for improved working conditions for people laboring in extreme heat, at times without adequate breaks or water.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 19, 2026
This base allowed to soar last Sunday’s spire of victory at another Jack Hughes’s laboring hand.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 27, 2026
Time was probably the source of the joke I was laboring to recount.
From "Jacob Have I Loved" by Katherine Paterson
Vocabulary lists containing labor
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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Labor Day Lexicon: Words That Put You To Work
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Working Together: The Language of Unions
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