Etymologically
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labour

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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
  • 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