Words / T / General

travail

noun/ˈtraveɪl/

C2CEFR level
80/100Rarity: very rare
FormalRegister

Painful or laborious effort, or an arduous piece of work.

The dictionary was the travail of a lifetime, compiled letter by letter.

Similar: toil, labour, exertion

Origin: From Old French travail 'suffering, labour', from Latin trepalium, an instrument of torture.

Topic: toil in General English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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More general words: toil