labor
Usage
What are other ways to say labor?
Labor particularly denotes hard manual work: backbreaking labor; arduous labor. Drudgery suggests continuous, dreary, and dispiriting work, especially of a menial or servile kind: the drudgery of household tasks. Toil suggests wearying or exhausting labor: toil that breaks down the worker's health. Work is the general word and may apply to exertion that is either easy or hard: fun work; heavy work.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Housing production requires home builders with capacity, banks willing to finance them, skilled labor and a pipeline of projects capable of being built repeatedly.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 15, 2026
That’s feeding a disconnect between what the labor market looks like on paper and how many Americans are feeling about their job prospects.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 15, 2026
With Tuesday's lawsuit, one of Hollywood's powerful labor unions hopes to undo the US Department of Justice's approval.
From Barron's ● Jul. 15, 2026
The U.S. is experiencing an impressive stretch of low unemployment, which gives the labor market a rosy hue to outside observers.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 15, 2026
We shuffle our way across Przemyśl to the labor department building.
From "The Light in Hidden Places" by Sharon Cameron
He labors seven days a week as a construction worker, but goes out dancing every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 4, 2026
After all, since 1776, millions of Irishmen and women and their descendants have helped make America great through their labors.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 11, 2025
Most weeks, this column labors to avoid sentimentality.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 9, 2025
The hivemind refuses to hurt or kill any living being, states its preference for vegetarianism and merrily labors to care for the few who aren’t like them.
From Salon ● Nov. 26, 2025
On July 30, he sent the fruits of his labors to Washington, who found the Hamilton draft “exceedingly just, & just such as ought to be inculcated.”
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
Last Thanksgiving, Megan Thee Stallion labored for days to prepare an elaborate holiday dinner for then-boyfriend Klay Thompson and his family.
From Salon ● Apr. 30, 2026
The Eastern District of California said the time it spent reviewing her alleged misconduct was a “waste of limited time and judicial resources in a district that has labored under a longstanding caseload crisis.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 14, 2026
Araceli Molar de Barrios labored in the fields for nearly 30 years after arriving in the U.S. in 1995, two years after Chavez’s death.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 21, 2026
The connection between Douglass’s fame, Assing’s death and the chemical composition of a poison might be somewhat labored, but Ms. Popova sells it as a portrait of cosmic interconnectedness.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 6, 2026
My breathing labored as I struggled to push on with the Operation Save Fig bike-a-thon.
From "Sir Fig Newton and the Science of Persistence" by Sonja Thomas
Agility, an Oregon-based company whose robots are already laboring within a Plexiglas cage at an auto-parts factory, recently announced plans to go public at a valuation of $2.5 billion.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 4, 2026
One minute, she’d been in the bathroom, laboring through a contraction.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 25, 2026
Montiel, 62, said Chavez’s legacy continues to reverberate as the union has pushed for improved working conditions for people laboring in extreme heat, at times without adequate breaks or water.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 19, 2026
"For decades, while laboring in the vineyards of the community, he inspired us to keep hope alive in the struggle for liberty and justice for all," the Democrat said.
From BBC ● Feb. 17, 2026
On this particular June Sunday they rode up through the lanes between the drystone walls that Beryl’s laboring ancestors had built, and over the top of Highdown Rise, with mud up their bare shins.
From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein
Vocabulary lists containing labor
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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Labor Day Lexicon: Words That Put You To Work
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Working Together: The Language of Unions
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