1. Physical toil or bodily exertion, especially when fatiguing, irksome, or unavoidable, in distinction from sportive exercise; hard, muscular effort directed to some useful end, as agriculture, manufactures, and like; servile toil; exertion; work. God hath set Labor and rest, as day and night, to men Successive. Milton.
2. Intellectual exertion; mental effort; as, the labor of compiling a history.
3. That which requires hard work for its accomplishment; that which demands effort. Being a labor of so great a difficulty, the exact performance thereof we may rather wish than look for. Hooker.
4. Travail; the pangs and efforts of childbirth. The queen's in labor, They say, in great extremity; and feared She'll with the labor end. Shak.
5. Any pang or distress. Shak.
6. (Naut.)
Defn: The pitching or tossing of a vessel which results in the straining of timbers and rigging.
7. Etym: [Sp.]
Defn: A measure of land in Mexico and Texas, equivalent to an area of 177 Bartlett.
Syn. — Work; toil; drudgery; task; exertion; effort; industry; painstaking. See Toll.