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.
Some of the candidates’ fantasy characters were literal — City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, a labor organizer running for reelection, was a barbarian named “Hugo the Organizer” using his “righteous indignation” to organize workers.
From Los Angeles Times • May 24, 2026
“I’m not sure that if we see a labor market that sours that it’s going to revert to traditional gender norms in the home—it might actually accelerate what this study was showing.”
From The Wall Street Journal • May 23, 2026
Fierce competition squeezes prices while driving up labor and real-estate costs.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 23, 2026
The Select Committee said its investigation reviewed due diligence materials, risk assessments, third-party reports and internal approvals that call into question CATL’s statements about its military ties and forced labor record.
From Barron's • May 22, 2026
It often took all day to create every meal from scratch, laboring in a hot kitchen to cook enough sustenance to support dawn- to-dusk physical labor.
From "Reaching for the Moon" by Katherine Johnson
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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