labour

Pronunciation

• IPA: UK /ˈleɪ.bə/, US /ˈleɪ.bɚ/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English labour,^[2] borrowed from Old French labour (“toil, work, exertion, task; suffering”) (modern French labeur “ploughing”),^[3][2][4] from Latin labor (“toil, exertion; hardship, pain, fatigue”),^[3][2] a word of uncertain origin.^[3] It has been connected with lābī (“to slip, glide”) or labāre “to totter”, on the notion of tottering under a burden, but de Vaan finds this unconvincing.^[3][2][4] The verb is from Old French labourer, from labōrāre (“to work, toil, suffer”).^[3][2][4] The native word is work.^[3] The spelling labor is found in Middle English as early as 1377,^[2] and labour is now the chiefly British spelling of labor.^[3][5] It is related to laboratory, elaborate and laborious.^[6][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

A task, a project: about 1300 in Etymonline^[3] and before 1325 in Barnhart;^[2] the OED's first sense, exertion of body or mind, is from before 1300.^[7]

Semantic evolution

“Exertion of the body; trouble, hardship” is from the late 14th century.^[3] The meaning “physical exertions of childbirth” is attested from the 1590s, short for labour of birth (early 15th century),^[3] and Barnhart credits Spenser's Epithalamion (1595).^[2] In economics, work directed to supplying a community's needs was used technically by Adam Smith in 1776,^[6][7] and labour as the body of workers, contrasted with capital, is from 1839.^[3][7] Labour-saving is from 1776,^[3][2] labour of love from 1797,^[3] labor union from 1866^[2] and Labor Day was first marked in New York City in 1882.^[3] With a capital, Labour as short for the British Labour Party is attested from 1892, and the party name from 1886.^[3] The verb, “to work hard, strive”, is from the late 14th century;^[3] in modern French, Spanish and Portuguese it means “to plough”.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1300 – a task.^[3]
• late 14th century – toil, hardship; verb, to work hard.^[3]
• 1590s – childbirth.^[3]
• 1776 – economic labour, and labour-saving.^[7][3]
• 1839 – the body of workers.^[3]
• 1882 – Labor Day.^[3]
• 1892 – the British Labour Party.^[3]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. Physical or mental exertion; work.
2. A task or piece of work.
3. Workers, especially manual workers, as a class or as a factor of production.
4. The process of childbirth, from the first contractions to delivery.
5. Labour, the British Labour Party.

Verb

1. To work hard; to strive.
2. To move or proceed with great effort.
3. To be in childbirth.
4. To work out or dwell on in excessive detail: labour the point.

Word family

• laborite
• labourite

Related words

• laborious
• laboratory
• labor
• elaborate
• belabour
• collaborate
• travail

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press