labor

Other spellings

• labour

Pronunciation

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Hyphenation: la‧bor

Noun

Singular labor

Plural labors

1. (uncountable) Labor is the work that people do, usually lifting, moving, building, etc. rather than desk work.

   The cost of labor is higher than the cost of building materials.

2. (uncountable) Labor are the people who do this kind of work.

   There's a big labor shortage in the construction industry.

3. (uncountable) Labor is the process a pregnant woman goes through when she is giving birth.

   She was in labor for more than 12 hours before her baby was born.

   Her labor was painful and slow. The doctors had to give her medicines to speed up her labor.

4. Labor is the name of a big political party in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.

   Labor won the election.

Verb

Plain form labor

Third-person singular labors

Past tense labored

Past participle labored

Present participle laboring

1. (intransitive) If you labor, you work hard.

   He labored over the food all afternoon to get ready for dinner.

2. (transitive) If you labor the point, you keep talking about it after people understand it well.