travail means arduous or painful exertion; excessive labor, suffering, hardship. It carries an Arena rating of 1643, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, travail ranks #1,386 of 25,264 for Qualifying, #2,308 of 14,431 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #2,350 of 14,448 for Most Incisive Words, #2,356 of 14,297 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words.
travail is pronounced /tɹəˈveɪl/.
Why “travail” is a great word
Arduous or painful exertion, suffering, or hardship, particularly the labor of childbirth. From Middle English travail, from Old French travail ('suffering, torment'), deverbal from travailler, from Vulgar Latin *tripāliāre ('to torture'), from Late Latin trepalium (an instrument of torture), from Latin tripālis ('having three stakes'), from tri- ('three') + pālus ('stake'). Unlike toil, which suggests prolonged and strenuous labor, or drudgery, which emphasizes dull and menial weariness, travail carries the sharp, inescapable ache of acute suffering. It is the woman on her knees, the sweat-darkened sheet, the animal sound that escapes before language returns; it is the stonemason's crushed finger, the miner's black lung, and the writer's three a.m. cramp in the hand that still moves. The word carries its own history of stakes: three of them, the precise number required to hold something in place while it suffers transformation.
Etymology
Possible appearance of a tripalium
Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *tréyes
Proto-Indo-European *tri-
Proto-Italic *tri-
Latin tri-
Proto-Indo-European *peh₂ǵ-der.
Proto-Indo-European *peh₂ǵ-slos
Proto-Italic *pākslos
Latin pālus
Latin -is
Latin tripālis
Proto-Indo-European *-yós
Proto-Italic *-ios
Old Latin -ios
Latin -ius
Latin -ium
Byzantine Greek τριπάσσαλον (tripássalon)calq.?
Vulgar Latin tripālium
Proto-Indo-European *-h₂
Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂
Proto-Indo-European *-yéti
Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti
Proto-Italic *-āō
Vulgar Latin -āre
Vulgar Latin *tripāliāre
Old French travaillerdeverb.
Old French travailbor.
Middle English travail
English travail
Inherited from Middle English travail, borrowed from Old French travail (“suffering, torment”), deverbal from travailler, from Vul
noun
- Arduous or painful exertion; excessive labor, suffering, hardship.“Great trauail is created to al men, and an heauie yoke vpon the children of Adam, from the day of their comming forth of their mothers wombe, vntil the day of their burying, into the mother of al. […]”
- Specifically, the labor of childbirth.“The lady shrieks and, well-a-near,
Does fall in travail with her fear.”
- An act of working; labor (US), labour (British).
- The eclipse of a celestial object.
verb
- To toil.“[A]ll slothful persons, which will not travail for their livings, do the will of the devil.”
- To go through the labor of childbirth.“A woman when she traveyleth hath sorowe, be cause her houre is come: but as sone as she is delivered off her chylde she remembreth no moare her anguysshe, for ioye that a man is borne in to the worlde.”
Words closest in meaning
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