travail

• POS: Noun, Verb (intransitive)
• HYPHEN: trav=ail

CIDE DICTIONARY

travail, n. [F. travail; cf. Pr. trabalh, trebalh, toil, torment, torture; probably from LL. trepalium a place where criminals are tortured, instrument of torture. But the French word may be akin to L. trabs a beam, or have been influenced by a derivative from trabs (cf. Trave). Cf. Travel.].

•  Labor with pain; severe toil or exertion.  [1913 Webster]

  "As everything of price, so this doth require travail."  [1913 Webster]
•  Parturition; labor; as, an easy travail.  [1913 Webster]

travail, n. [Cf. F. travail, a frame for confining a horse, or OF. travail beam, and E. trave, n. Cf. Travail, v. i.].

 Same as Travois.  [Webster 1913 Suppl.]

travail, v. i. [F. travailler, OF. traveillier, travaillier, to labor, toil, torment; cf. Pr. trebalhar to torment, agitate. See Travail, n.].

•  To labor with pain; to toil.  Latimer.  [1913 Webster]
•  To suffer the pangs of childbirth; to be in labor.  [1913 Webster]

travail, v. t. 

 To harass; to tire.  [1913 Webster]
"As if all these troubles had not been sufficient to travail the realm, a great division fell among the nobility."  [1913 Webster]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

travail, n. & v. literary
--n.
1 painful or laborious effort.
2 the pangs of childbirth.
--v.intr. undergo a painful effort, esp. in childbirth.

Etymology

ME f. OF travail, travaillier ult. f. med.L trepalium instrument of torture f. L tres three + palus stake

THESAURUS

travail

accouchement, be confined, bear, bear a child, bear young, birth, birth throes, birthing, blessed event, calve, cast, childbearing, childbed, childbirth, confinement, delivery, dig, dirty work, donkeywork, drop, drudge, drudgery, employment, fag, farrow, fatigue, fawn, foal, genesis, give birth, giving birth, grind, grub, hammer, hammer away, handiwork, handwork, hatching, have, have a baby, have young, having a baby, industry, kitten, labor, lamb, lick, lick of work, lie in, litter, manual labor, moil, multiparity, nascency, nativity, pains, parturition, peg, peg away, plod, plug, plug along, plug away, plugging, pound away, pup, rat race, scut work, slavery, slog, spadework, stroke, stroke of work, struggle, sweat, task, the Nativity, the stork, throw, tiresome work, toil, treadmill, wade through, whelp, work, work away, yean

ROGET THESAURUS

travail

Exertion

N exertion, effort, strain, tug, pull, stress, throw, stretch, struggle, spell, spurt, spirt, stroke of work, stitch of work, a strong pull a long pull and a pull all together, dead lift, heft, gymnastics, exercise, exercitation, wear and tear, ado, toil and trouble, uphill work, hard work, warm work, harvest time, labor, work, toil, travail, manual labor, sweat of one's brow, swink, drudgery, slavery, fagging, hammering, limae labor, industry, industriousness, operoseness, operosity, trouble, pains, duty, resolution, energy, laboring, laborious, operose, elaborate, strained, toilsome, troublesome, wearisome, uphill, herculean, gymnastic, palestric, hard-working, painstaking, strenuous, energetic, hard at work, on the stretch, laboriously, lustily, pugnis et calcibus, with might and main, with all one's might, with a strong hand, with a sledge hammer, with much ado, to the best of one's abilities, totis viribus, vi et armis, manibus pedibusque, tooth and nail, unguibus et rostro, hammer and tongs, heart and soul, through thick and thin, by the sweat of one's brow, suo Marte, aide-toi le ciel t'aidera, and still be doing, never done, buen principio la mitad es hecha, cosa ben fatta e' fatta due volie, it is better to wear out than to rust out, labor omnia vincit, labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in Heaven, le travail du corps delivre des peines de l'esprit, manu forti, ora et labora.

Production

N production, creation, construction, formation, fabrication, manufacture, building, architecture, erection, edification, coinage, diaster, organization, nisus formativus, putting together, establishment, workmanship, performance, achievement, flowering, fructification, inflorescence, bringing forth, parturition, birth, birth-throe, childbirth, delivery, confinement, accouchement, travail, labor, midwifery, obstetrics, geniture, gestation, assimilation, evolution, development, growth, entelechy, fertilization, gemination, germination, heterogamy, genesis, generation, epigenesis, procreation, progeneration, propagation, fecundation, impregnation, albumen, spontaneous generation, archegenesis, archebiosis, biogenesis, abiogenesis, digenesis, dysmerogenesis, eumerogenesis, heterogenesis, oogenesis, merogenesis, metogenesis, monogenesis, parthenogenesis, homogenesis, xenogenesis, authorship, publication, works, opus, oeuvre, biogeny, dissogeny, xenogeny, tocogony, vacuolization, edifice, building, structure, fabric, erection, pile, tower, flower, fruit, produced, producing, productive of, prolific, creative, formative, genetic, genial, genital, pregnant, enceinte, big with, fraught with, in the family way, teeming, parturient, in the straw, brought to bed of, puerperal, puerperous, digenetic, heterogenetic, oogenetic, xenogenetic, ectogenous, gamic, haematobious, sporogenous, sporophorous, architectonic, ex nihilo nihil, fiat lux, materiam superabat opus, nemo dat quod non habet.