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What is "laborious"

Crossword clues for laborious

laborious
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
laborious
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
laborious (=taking a lot of time and effort)
▪ The copying of manuscripts was a laborious process.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
business
▪ Then he could sleep through the drive and the laborious business of make-up.
process
▪ It is a laborious process, likely to lead to embarrassing blunders if badly done.
▪ But boiling the grain was a laborious process and produced an unpalatable mush.
▪ Producing these on conventional printers is a very laborious process and the results will only be in black and white.
▪ Analysts warn that it will be a long, laborious process.
▪ Used as an additional resource, a different dimension which adds to an otherwise laborious process, programs can be very effective.
▪ And yet, if we are asked to multiply by five, we will usually go through a fairly laborious process.
▪ Waxing is a very laborious process and the wood will require re-waxing at regular intervals.
▪ He used a small mechanical calculator to solve each problem, a laborious process later rapidly accomplished by computer.
task
▪ It is recognised, however, that this would be an extremely laborious task and unlikely to be fulfilled.
▪ Since everyone enjoyed the results of this laborious task, it seemed only fair that everyone participate in their production.
▪ Finally it was taken into the adjoining paint shop where the painting was done by hand, a laborious task.
▪ The laborious task of contacting all the men on the list from London Life cranked into life.
▪ The estates had been neglected in the war and Sharpe had begun the laborious task of repairing the years of neglect.
▪ We began our laborious task without once reflecting on the many dangers that might attend it.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ For Perry, writing is a laborious process.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Laborious

Laborious \La*bo"ri*ous\, a. [L. laboriosus, fr. labor labor: cf. F. laborieux.]

  1. Requiring labor, perseverance, or sacrifices; toilsome; tiresome.

    Dost thou love watchings, abstinence, or toil, Laborious virtues all? Learn these from Cato.
    --Addison.

  2. Devoted to labor; diligent; industrious; as, a laborious mechanic. [1913 Webster] -- La*bo"ri*ous*ly, adv. -- La*bo"ri*ous*ness, n.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
laborious

late 14c., "hard-working, industrious," from Old French laborios "arduous, wearisome; hard-working" (12c., Modern French laborieux), from Latin laboriosus "toilsome, wearisome, troublesome," from labor (see labor (n.)). Meaning "costing much labor, burdensome" is from early 15c.; meaning "resulting from hard work" is mid-15c. Related: Laboriousness.

Wiktionary
laborious

a. 1 Requiring much physical effort; toilsome. 2 Mentally difficult; painstaking 3 industrious.

WordNet
laborious

adj. characterized by toilsome effort to the point of exhaustion; especially physical effort; "worked their arduous way up the mining valley"; "a grueling campaign"; "hard labor"; "heavy work"; "heavy going"; "spent many laborious hours on the project"; "set a punishing pace" [syn: arduous, backbreaking, grueling, gruelling, hard, heavy, punishing, toilsome]

Usage examples of "laborious".

It is clumsy in practice, for the continued adding of small portions of salt solution is laborious and becomes impossible with more than a few milligrams of silver in solution.

I took the glasses back from Chubby and watched Suleiman Dada emerge from the cabin and make a laborious ascent to the open bridge.

As he could not get any ancient ceilings, he was obliged to have them painted, and Mengs was undoubtedly the greatest and the most laborious painter of his age.

Virgil had ennobled this elegant retreat, which attracted the lovers of repose and study, from the noise, the smoke, and the laborious opulence of Rome.

They fled in real or affected disorder, engaged the Palmyrenians in a laborious pursuit, harassed them by a desultory combat, and at length discomfited this impenetrable but unwieldy body of cavalry.

Stephen noticed that they had prepared another sail for fothering the ship, and that they were going through the same laborious motions of passing it under her bottom, a long, tedious operation with innumerable orders roaring over the grind of the pumps.

Aurelius Hauser examined his white shirtfront, and, finding a small beetle making its laborious way up it, he plucked it off, crushed it between spatulate thumb and forefinger with a satisfying chitinous crackle, and tossed it away.

It is this entirely historified work which we should be told about, instead of an eternal aesthetics of laborious gestures.

He had founded Lodestar Investment Management twenty years ago, after ten laborious years at a large Boston moneymanagement firm.

And to believe that, was for the mind of General Ople the having to return to his alphabet and recommence the ascent of the laborious mountain of understanding.

The prahu was gliding through a stretch of comparatively quiet and placid water where the stream spread out into a little basin just above a narrow gorge through which they had just forced their way by dint of the most laborious exertions on the part of the crew.

Not ten minutes after the swabber had removed all traces of the scene, Babbington was flying about the upper rigging in pursuit of Ricketts, with the clerk toiling with laborious, careful delight a great way behind.

The virtue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was of severer and more laborious kind.

They were making their laborious way southward from Arsudun harbor, tacking into a stiff breeze.

There will be no need for keeping in touch with human nature, no call for patience and all that laborious upbuilding stone by stone which is so apt to discourage mankind and imperil the fruition of great reforms.