| Library / English Dictionary |
LABORIOUS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Characterized by effort to the point of exhaustion; especially physical effort
Example:
set a punishing pace
Synonyms:
arduous; backbreaking; grueling; gruelling; hard; heavy; laborious; operose; punishing; toilsome
Classified under:
Similar:
effortful (requiring great physical effort)
Derivation:
labor (productive work (especially physical work done for wages))
laboriousness (the quality of requiring extended effort)
Context examples:
I had worked two chairs with my knife, the sorrel nag helping me in the grosser and more laborious part.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
I found that I could not compose a female without again devoting several months to profound study and laborious disquisition.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
The household at the Abbey Grange were much surprised at our return, but Sherlock Holmes, finding that Stanley Hopkins had gone off to report to headquarters, took possession of the dining-room, locked the door upon the inside, and devoted himself for two hours to one of those minute and laborious investigations which form the solid basis on which his brilliant edifices of deduction were reared.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
I rested two or three minutes, and then gave the boat another shove, and so on, till the sea was no higher than my arm-pits; and now, the most laborious part being over, I took out my other cables, which were stowed in one of the ships, and fastened them first to the boat, and then to nine of the vessels which attended me; the wind being favourable, the seamen towed, and I shoved, until we arrived within forty yards of the shore; and, waiting till the tide was out, I got dry to the boat, and by the assistance of two thousand men, with ropes and engines, I made a shift to turn it on its bottom, and found it was but little damaged.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
