laboured, labored, ppl. a.
(ˈleɪbəd)
[f. labour v. + -ed1.]
1. † Cultivated, tilled, ploughed (obs.); also, of a mine, worked.
| 1579 Spenser Sheph. Cal. Oct. 58 Whereon he earst had taught his flocks to feede, And laboured lands to yield the timely eare. 1697 Dryden Virg. Georg. ii. 414 Root up wild Olives from thy labour'd Lands. 1833 Tennyson Œnone 113 Or laboured mine undrainable of ore. |
† 2. a. Employed in labour; hard worked; oppressed with labour or toil. Obs.
| 1595 Shakes. John ii. i. 232 Your King, whose labour'd spirits Fore-wearied in this action of swift speede. 1634 Milton Comus 291 What time the labour'd Oxe In his loose traces from the furrow came. 1682 Dryden Dk. Guise i. i, Turn'd out, like labour'd Oxen, after Harvest. |
† b. Worn with use. Obs.
| 1535 Coverdale 1 Sam. xiii. 21 The edges of the plow⁓shares, and mattockes, & forckes, and axes were laboured, and the poyntes blont. |
3. Wrought, produced, or accomplished with labour; highly elaborated; hence in depreciatory sense, performed or accomplished only by the expenditure of excessive toil or tedious elaboration, and consequently showing indications of heaviness or want of spontaneity. Also, of physical action: Heavy, performed with great effort. Also laboured-at.
| 1608 Shakes. Per. ii. iii. 17 In framing an Artist, art hath thus decreed, To make some good, but others to exceed, And you are her labourd scholler. a 1658 Cleveland Elegy B. Jonson 65 The marbled Glory of thy labour'd Rhyme. 1703 Pope Thebais 202 Labour'd columns in long order plac'd. 1740 Pitt æneid x. 759 High in my Dome, are Silver Talents roll'd With Piles of Labour'd and Unlabour'd Gold. 1756 Burke Subl. & B. v. v, There is not perhaps in the whole Eneid a more grand and laboured passage than the description of Vulcan's cavern in Etna. 1826 J. Foster in Life & Corr. (1846) II. 84 Other writing of a laboured and tedious kind. 1856 Olmsted Slave States 215 A labored investigation of evidence. 1875 Jowett Plato (ed. 2) V. 15 The dialogue is generally weak and laboured. 1876 G. M. Hopkins Poems (1918) 9 And lily-coloured clothes provided Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun. 1897 M. Kingsley W. Africa 156 The laboured beat of the engines. 1898 G. Meredith Odes Fr. Hist. 72 Laboured mounds, that a foot or a wanton stick may subvert. |
Hence ˈlabouredly adv., ˈlabouredness.
| 1882 Daily Tel. 24 Feb. (Cass.), He spoke labouredly and with hesitation. 1930 J. W. Mackail Largeness in Lit. 6 Largeness is..the opposite..of thinness, of tightness, of labouredness. |