LABOURING

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does labouring mean? 

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

1. doing arduous or unpleasant work

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• LABOURING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Doing arduous or unpleasant work

Synonyms:

drudging; laboring; labouring; toiling

Context example:

toiling coal miners in the black deeps

Similar:

busy (actively or fully engaged or occupied)

 Context examples 

You are always labouring and toiling, exposed to every risk and hardship.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

If she had been born a Queen Bee, and they labouring Bees, they could not have been more satisfied of that.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

You are labouring under a slight error, sir, if you will permit me to say so.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Then the wind came, fair and fresh, and the boat was soon labouring through a heavy sea toward the island.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Recalled by the rumbling of wheels to the road before me, I saw a heavily-laden waggon labouring up the hill, and not far beyond were two cows and their drover.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It was much easier to chat than to study; much pleasanter to let her imagination range and work at Harriet's fortune, than to be labouring to enlarge her comprehension or exercise it on sober facts; and the only literary pursuit which engaged Harriet at present, the only mental provision she was making for the evening of life, was the collecting and transcribing all the riddles of every sort that she could meet with, into a thin quarto of hot-pressed paper, made up by her friend, and ornamented with ciphers and trophies.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

If people like to read their books, it is all very well, but to be at so much trouble in filling great volumes, which, as I used to think, nobody would willingly ever look into, to be labouring only for the torment of little boys and girls, always struck me as a hard fate; and though I know it is all very right and necessary, I have often wondered at the person's courage that could sit down on purpose to do it.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Therefore since money alone was able to perform all these feats, our Yahoos thought they could never have enough of it to spend, or to save, as they found themselves inclined, from their natural bent either to profusion or avarice; that the rich man enjoyed the fruit of the poor man’s labour, and the latter were a thousand to one in proportion to the former; that the bulk of our people were forced to live miserably, by labouring every day for small wages, to make a few live plentifully.

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

Mrs. Norris felt herself defrauded of an office on which she had always depended, whether his arrival or his death were to be the thing unfolded; and was now trying to be in a bustle without having anything to bustle about, and labouring to be important where nothing was wanted but tranquillity and silence.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

And lo, the Doctor, always our good friend, labouring at his Dictionary (somewhere about the letter D), and happy in his home and wife.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)