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. 6, 2026

I learned that Dressler’s success had come after decades of triumph and travail.

From New York Times ● Mar. 15, 2024

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

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

And looking back it seemed to Carolina as if the children had been an explosion of no more than a moment’s duration, instead of a twenty-five-year travail.

From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols

At one moment, he shares a wild story about the near-mortal travails of sharing a house with Iggy Pop.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 20, 2026

Martin O'Neill needed a win after his recent travails and this was a stroll in the park that he could not have imagined.

From BBC ● Oct. 18, 2026

She is the undisputed scene-stealer of the movie, a travelogue that is loosely about the Civil War and more directly about the personal travails and love life of its director, Ross McElwee.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 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

So doth Christ in His mercy often supply courage and industry equal to adversity, that His creations might meet their travails.

From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson

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

The early Church travailed in pain for the souls of dying men.

From The Art of Soul-Winning by J.W. Mahood

Before she travailed she brought forth; before her pains came she was delivered of a man-child.

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

There I toiled and travailed and sweated to raise the dead.

From Atlantis by Adele Szold Seltzer

Through this opening, much resembling the low glass door of an orangery, the travailing historian might be seen from head to foot, miserably doubled up like Cardinal La Balue in his cage.

From The Immortal Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 by A. W. (Arthur Woollgar) Verrall

The role it is destined to play in hastening the emergence of the world order of Bahá’u’lláh, now stirring in the womb of this travailing age, cannot as yet be fathomed.

From Messages to America by Shoghi Effendi

The agonies of a travailing age are culminating.

From Messages to America by Shoghi Effendi

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

Both are directly hastening the emergence of the spiritual World Order stirring in the womb of a travailing age.

From Messages to America by Shoghi Effendi