Kilo Lingo

#268 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

work, labour; hardship, toil

Examples

.

Toil conquers all things.

.

They built the wall with great effort.

laudavit.

No one praised his labours.

.

After toil rest is sweet.

.

He saw no end of the work.

Labor, laboris, m., third declension. Effort and the suffering that comes with effort are not separate ideas in Latin, so labores in the plural can mean exertions or hardships and often means both at once; the labours of Hercules are labores in exactly that double sense.

There is a trap. A separate verb labor, labi, lapsus sum means "to slip, glide, fall down", it is deponent, and its first person singular is spelled identically to the noun's nominative. Nothing but the construction will tell you which you are looking at, and it gave English lapse, collapse and relapse while the noun gave labour, laborious and elaborate. Labor omnia vincit is Virgil in the Georgics, and in context it is less a motivational slogan than a grim observation that unremitting toil wears everything down.

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Latin · Free printables

labor: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Latin word "labor" (work, labour; hardship, toil): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.

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This word is part of lesson 6.