travail

Pronunciation

• IPA: /tɹəˈveɪl/, /ˈtɹæˌveɪl/^[1]

Etymology

It comes from Middle English travail,^[2][3][4] from Old French travail (“suffering, painful effort”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from travailler “to toil”, originally “to trouble, torture”,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from Vulgar Latin *tripaliare (“to torture”),^[2][3][4][5] from *tripālium, Late Latin trepālium “instrument of torture”,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} probably from Latin tripalis (“having three stakes”).^[2][3][4][5] It is a doublet of travel.^[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Hard bodily or mental labour, toil, trouble (about 1250–75).^[3][7][4]

Semantic evolution

From the late 13th century the noun also meant the labour and pain of childbirth (1297),^[7][4] and the verb to be in labour by the mid-14th century.^[4] Travel, originally the same word, took the sense of a laborious journey and developed separately.^[4] Both noun and verb are now chiefly literary or archaic.^[7]

Timeline

• about 1250 – toil, hardship.^[7]
• about 1275 – verb, to toil; to trouble.^[3]
• 1297 – the labour of childbirth.^[7]
• mid-14th century – verb, to be in labour.^[4]
• 1563 – a finished work, especially a literary one.^[7]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. Hard, painful work; toil.
2. Mental or physical suffering; anguish or agony.
3. The labor of childbirth.

Verb

1. To work hard; to toil.
2. To be in the labour of childbirth.

Related words

• travel
• pale
• tripod

Usage notes

Random House lists labor and moil as synonyms of the noun in its sense of toil, and torment and agony in its sense of suffering.^[6]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c d e f Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press