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:
Data in the next few weeks on consumer inflation and the labor market will be critical to the upcoming decision.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 27, 2026
Department of Labor, argued that the lower H-2A wage rates would not affect U.S. workers because growers already faced a labor shortage, with demand for farm labor exceeding the available supply, CalMatters reported.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 2026
“National leaders should convene economists, technologists, labor experts, business leaders and workers themselves regularly to identify where existing institutions are failing and what new authorities may be needed,” he continued.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 26, 2026
The labor movement understands what is at stake.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 25, 2026
Barbara took time out from her work as a labor activist to set down her memories.
From "The Woman All Spies Fear" by Amy Butler Greenfield
He labors seven days a week as a construction worker, but goes out dancing every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 4, 2026
Much has been said, notably by the critic Harold Bloom, about the agony of the artist who labors under the shadow of the greats.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 10, 2026
Most weeks, this column labors to avoid sentimentality.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 9, 2025
Flynn deserves a break from his heroic theatrical labors, but he’s not done yet.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 27, 2024
Could not our labors be put to better use if we were assigned to grow crops and feed the hungry people of Egypt?
From "The (Mostly) True Story of Cleopatra's Needle" by Dan Gutman
The noise of backhoes, cranes and bulldozers echoed across Colombia's quake-hit cities on Sunday as workers labored to remove rubble, though the chance of finding survivors was slim a week after the disaster.
From Barron's ● Aug. 17, 2026
Her brother had labored to secure White House approval for the bill.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026
Thus far, however, this effort has yielded only a few dozen genetically modified long-haired mice, which evokes the Aesopian adage about the mountain that labored and brought forth a mouse.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 21, 2026
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
He held the boy and bent to hear the labored suck of air.
From "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy
That, plus his aversion to economic ideology, helped craft a reputation for the Fed as an independent, technocratic institution laboring to do a good job for the American people.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 22, 2026
One minute, she’d been in the bathroom, laboring through a contraction.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 25, 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
"For decades, while laboring in the vineyards of the community, he inspired us to keep hope alive in the struggle for liberty and justice for all," the Democrat said.
From BBC ● Feb. 17, 2026
It kept rotating to the grind of the laboring gears, which sounded louder now.
From "The Kill Order (Maze Runner, Book Four; Origin)" by James Dashner
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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