travail
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: trə-vālʹ
enpr: trăvʹāl'
ipa: /tɹəˈveɪl/
ipa: /ˈtɹævˌeɪl/
rhymes: -eɪl
Forms: form: travails
form: travaux
form: travel
form: travell
Etymology: PIE word
 *tréyes
]
From Middle English travail, from Old French travail (“suffering, torment”), deverbal of travailler, from Vulgar Latin *tripāliāre, from Late Latin tripālium, from Latin tripālis (“held up by three stakes”) from Proto-Italic *trēs + *pākslos from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂ǵ-. Doublet of travel.
Senses: examples: text: Great trauail is created to al men, and an heauie yoke vpon the children of Adam, from the day of their comming forth of their mothers wombe, vntil the day of their burying, into the mother of al. […]
ref: 1582 – 1610, Douay Rheims Bible, Book of Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Sirach) XL.1–11
text: But as every thing of price, so this doth require travail.
ref: 1597, Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, Book V, §21:
text: Travell and pleasure, most unlike in nature, are notwithstanding followed together by a kind of I wot not what natural conjunction[…].
ref: 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 20, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:
text: But I know that to-day there are great questions calling for an answer, wrongs clamoring to be righted, a people in travail that pleads for ease!
ref: 1919, Stanley J. Weyman, “XIII Peter Pauper”, in The Great House:
text: He had thought of making a destiny for himself, through laborious and untiring travail.
ref: 1936, Djuna Barnes, Nightwood, Faber & Faber, published 2007, page 38:
text: And the British mandarin Left, like their contemporaries in the Foreign Office, had little time for the travails of the small countries between Germany and Russia, whom they had always regarded as something of a nuisance.
ref: 2005, Tony Judt, “Culture Wars”, in Postwar: A history of Europe since 1945, London: Vintage Books, published 2010, →ISBN:
text: In the most egregious examples, these stories harness a particular woman’s travails without acknowledging the systems and forces that contributed to her treatment and how these systems persist in our own time.
ref: 2022 March 31, Alexis Soloski, “Why the Sudden Urge to Reconsider Famous Women?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
text: Volkswagen’s travails are symbolic of the nation’s overall economic malaise and a political crisis that collapsed the government in December, paving the way for early elections Feb. 23.
ref: 2025 January 27, Lenora Chu, “How Volkswagen slid from German engineering icon to innovation laggard”, in The Christian Science Monitor:
glosses: Arduous or painful exertion; excessive labor, suffering, hardship.
examples: text: The lady shrieks and, well-a-near,
Does fall in travail with her fear.
ref: c. 1607–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, [George Wilkins?], The Late, and Much Admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. […], London: […] [William White and Thomas Creede] for Henry Gosson, […], published 1609, →OCLC, [Act III, scene chorus]:
text: And it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold, twins were in her womb. And it came to pass, when she travailed, that the one put out his hand: and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came out first,
ref: 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 38:27–28:
glosses: Specifically, the labor of childbirth.
glosses: An act of working; labor (US), labour (British).
glosses: The eclipse of a celestial object.
glosses: Obsolete form of travel.
glosses: Alternative form of travois (“a kind of sled”)