laborious

• labourious (obsolete)
• laborous (obsolete)
• labourous (obsolete)

From Old French laborios, from Latin laboriosus.

• IPA^(key): /ləˈbɔːɹiəs/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• Rhymes: -ɔːɹiəs

laborious (comparative more laborious, superlative most laborious)

1. Requiring much physical effort; toilsome.
   • 1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter I, in Animal Farm , London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC, page 7:

     Let us face it, our lives are miserable, laborious, and short.

   • 1951 May, R. K. Kirkland, “The Cavan & Leitrim Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 343:

     The coal is then transferred to broad-gauge wagons for transport to Dublin. The transhipment is a rather laborious business, the coal being shovelled by hand from one wagon to another.

2. Mentally difficult; painstaking.
3. Industrious.
   • 1697, Virgil, “The Fourth Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. , London: Jacob Tonson, , →OCLC, page 129, lines 241–242:

     All, with united Force, combine to drive / The lazy Drones from the laborious Hive.

• (requiring effort): painstaking, toilsome, worksome

• laboriously
• laboriousness

• labor, labour