labour

«labour» in Mova's school dictionary: hard work, especially work with your body — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (labour; labours — rare); verb (labour, labours, laboured, labouring); proper noun (Labour — a UK political party)

meaning for a pupil

1) Labour is hard work, especially work with your body. tree →

2) Labour is the workers in a country or company, or the work they do for pay. tree →

3) Labour is the process of giving birth to a baby. tree →

4) To labour is to work hard or to move with great effort. tree →

5) Labour (with a capital L) is one of the main political parties in the UK, and there are Labour parties in Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. tree →

6) A labour can also be a hard task that someone is given to complete, such as one of the twelve labours of Heracles. tree →

sense in the lessons

In history lessons, child labour means children doing hard jobs for little pay. In maths, labour costs are what you pay workers: hours × rate. In everyday life «go into labour» means start giving birth. Phrases: hard labour, child labour, manual labour, labour costs, in labour, labour of love, Labour Party.

examples

• Building the wall took a lot of labour. tree →
• Mum went into labour at two in the morning. tree →
• In the past, children worked in factories — this was child labour. tree →
• The plumber charged £40 an hour for labour; 3 hours cost £120. tree →
• The old horse laboured up the hill. tree →
• Making the quilt was a labour of love for Nan. tree →
• The Labour Party won the election. (UK) tree →
• The farm needs more labour at harvest time. tree →
• THE CRETAN BULL.--The seventh labour of Heracles was to capture the Cretan bull. tree →

note

British spelling «labour»; American spelling «labor» (also Australian «Labor Party»). Mostly uncountable. «Labourer» is a person who does manual work. «Laboratory» (lab) is a different word. In maths, labour cost = hours worked × pay per hour.

In the corpora

• Labour can take many hours, so a grandparent or friend often comes to look after the older children.
• "Her time came" means she went into labour and the baby began to be born (old-fashioned).
• The Potosí mine was worked under the Spanish mita forced-labour system, in which many Indigenous Andean workers died.
• In the UK, Labour and the Conservatives have been the two biggest parties for a long time.
• God hath seen mine affliction and the labour of my hands, and gave judgment yesternight.'

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «labour» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.