I. labour 1 S2 W1 AC BrE AmE British English , labor American English noun
[ Word Family: noun : ↑ labour , ↑ labourer ; verb : ↑ labour ]
1 . WORK [uncountable] work, especially physical work:
The garage charges £30 an hour for labour.
Many women do hard manual labour (=work with their hands) .
Workers withdrew their labour (=protested by stopping work) for twenty-four hours.
⇨ ↑ hard labour
2 . WORKERS [uncountable] all the people who work for a company or in a country:
a shortage of skilled labor
We need to reduce our labour costs.
3 . BABY [singular, uncountable] the process of giving birth to a baby
in labour
Meg was in labour for ten hours.
Diane went into labour at 2 o'clock.
a long/short/difficult labour
The labour pains were unbearable.
labour ward/room (=a room in a hospital where women give birth)
4 . a labour of love something that is hard work but that you do because you want to
5 . sb’s labours formal a period of hard work:
After several hours' gardening, we sat down to admire the results of our labours.
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COLLOCATIONS (for Meaning 2)
■ ADJECTIVES/NOUN + labour
▪ skilled/unskilled labour
Employers want to keep skilled labour because of the cost of training.
▪ cheap labour (=workers who have low wages)
Women and children were used as cheap labour.
▪ casual labour (=workers who do jobs that are not permanent)
The industry makes use of a large supply of casual labour.
▪ child labour
The shoe company was accused of using child labour in its factory.
▪ slave labour
Cotton was grown using slave labor.
■ labour + NOUN
▪ the labour force (=all the people who work in a country or for a company)
We need an educated labour force.
▪ the labour supply (=all the people available to work)
What was the effect of the war on the labour supply?
▪ the labour market (=the people looking for work and the jobs available)
the percentage of women in the labour market
▪ a labour shortage
Immigrants came into the country to fill the labour shortage.
▪ labour costs
There was pressure to keep down labour costs.
II. labour 2 AC BrE AmE British English , labor American English verb [intransitive]
[ Word Family: noun : ↑ labour , ↑ labourer ; verb : ↑ labour ]
1 . to work hard:
They laboured all day in the mills.
labour over
I’ve been labouring over this report all morning.
labour to do something
Ray had little talent but labored to acquire the skills of a writer.
2 . labour under a delusion/misconception/misapprehension etc to believe something that is not true:
She had laboured under the misconception that Bella liked her.
3 . labour the point to describe or explain something in too much detail or when people have already understood it
4 . [always + adverb/preposition] to move slowly and with difficulty:
I could see the bus labouring up the steep, windy road.