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labor

From Wiktionary
labor is on the Academic Word List.

Other spellings

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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Singular
labor

Plural
labors

Labor is on the Academic Vocabulary List.
  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

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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.