travail

Etymology 1

PIE word *tréyes ]] From Middle English travail, from Old French travail (“suffering, torment”), deverbal of travailler, from Vulgar Latin *tripāliāre, from Late Latin tripālium, from Latin tripālis (“held up by three stakes”) from Proto-Italic *trēs + *pākslos from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂ǵ-. Doublet of travel.

noun

1. (literary) 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. […] 1582 – 1610, Douay Rheims Bible, Book of Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Sirach) XL.1–11
   But as every thing of price, so this doth require travail. 1597, Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, Book V, §21
   He had thought of making a destiny for himself, through laborious and untiring travail. 1936, Djuna Barnes, Nightwood, Faber & Faber, published 2007, page 38
   And the British mandarin Left, like their contemporaries in the Foreign Office, had little time for the travails of the small countries between Germany and Russia, whom they had always regarded as something of a nuisance. 2005, Tony Judt, “Culture Wars”, in Postwar: A history of Europe since 1945, London: Vintage Books, published 2010
   In the most egregious examples, these stories harness a particular woman’s travails without acknowledging the systems and forces that contributed to her treatment and how these systems persist in our own time. 2022-03-31, Alexis Soloski, “Why the Sudden Urge to Reconsider Famous Women?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
2. Specifically, the labor of childbirth.
3. (obsolete, countable) An act of working; labor (US), labour (British).
4. (obsolete) The eclipse of a celestial object.
5. Obsolete form of travel.
6. Alternative form of travois (“a kind of sled”)

Etymology 2

From Middle English travailen, from Old French travaillier, from the noun (see above). Displaced native Middle English swinken (“to work”) (from Old English swincan (“to labour, to toil, to work at”)).

verb

1. To toil.
   [A]ll slothful persons, which will not travail for their livings, do the will of the devil. 1552, Hugh Latimer, Fourth Sermon on the Lord's Prayer, Preached before Lady Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk
2. To go through the labor of childbirth.