LABORIOUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does laborious mean? 

• LABORIOUS (adjective)
  The adjective LABORIOUS has 1 sense:

1. characterized by effort to the point of exhaustion; especially physical effort

  Familiarity information: LABORIOUS used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LABORIOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Characterized by effort to the point of exhaustion; especially physical effort

Synonyms:

arduous; backbreaking; grueling; gruelling; hard; heavy; laborious; operose; punishing; toilsome

Context example:

set a punishing pace

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 

The young man was constantly employed out of doors, and the girl in various laborious occupations within.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I could see by the working of his face that he was trying to think, and the process was so slow and laborious that, in my new-found security, I laughed aloud.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Alone I did it. Behold the fruit of pensive nights and laborious days when I watched the little working gangs as once I watched the criminal world of London.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Since the discovery of the first planets outside our solar system more than two decades ago, researchers have resorted to a laborious, one-by-one process of verifying suspected planets.

(Kepler Mission Announces Largest Collection of Planets Ever Discovered, NASA)

That the life I had since led was laborious enough to kill an animal of ten times my strength.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

It is laborious, is it not?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Then we distributed the various burdens among us—guns, ammunition, food, a tent, blankets, and the rest—and, shouldering our packages, we set forth upon the more laborious stage of our journey.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She might have been unconsciously sucking in the sad poison, while a sharer of his conversation with her friend; and from the best, the purest of motives, might now be denying herself this visit to Ireland, and resolving to divide herself effectually from him and his connexions by soon beginning her career of laborious duty.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

We were residing at the time in furnished lodgings close to a library where Sherlock Holmes was pursuing some laborious researches in early English charters—researches which led to results so striking that they may be the subject of one of my future narratives.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

When she had entered two or three laborious items in the account-book, Jip would walk over the page, wagging his tail, and smear them all out.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)