喜樂美語
  1. 1艱辛的勞苦、苦難、磨難（文言、書面用語）。中文可對「辛勞」「艱辛」「困頓」；注意它跟 travel（旅行）同源但意思完全不同

    Travail means very hard, painful, exhausting work, or a period of difficulty and suffering. It is a formal, old-fashioned, literary word — you meet it in books, speeches, and serious journalism, almost never in conversation. It is often plural: 'the travails of the early settlers', 'his political travails'. In the plural it leans towards troubles and struggles; in the singular it leans towards toil. It has one more sense worth knowing because you will meet it in older books: travail can mean the pains of childbirth, 'a woman in travail'. That is archaic now, but it explains the flavour of the word — suffering you must go through, not just work you must do. Here is the story students love. The Latin , tripalium, was a three-staked instrument of torture. From torture the word drifted to torment, then to hard labour, then to a journey — because journeys used to be dreadful. That last branch became our word travel. So travail and travel are twins, split apart when travelling stopped being an ordeal.

組成From Old French travail, from Latin tripalium — tri- 'three' plus palus 'stake' — a three-staked device used for torture. Torture became torment, torment became gruelling labour. The verb travailen came into Middle English from the same source.

同家族的字

  • travela doublet — the very same word, split off when it came to mean making a hard journey
  • tricyclesame Latin tri-, three
  • trianglesame Latin tri-, three
  • palethe fence-stake sense, from the same Latin palus as the -pal- inside travail

原始詞典資料8 筆記錄

以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。

travailnoun詞源 1/tɹəˈveɪl/

  • 1

    literaryArduous or painful exertion; excessive labor, suffering, hardship.

    • Great trauail is created to al men, and an heauie yoke vpon the children of Adam, from the day of their comming forth of their mothers wombe, vntil the day of their burying, into the mother of al. […]
    • But as every thing of price, so this doth require travail.
  • 2

    Specifically, the labor of childbirth.

    • The lady shrieks and, well-a-near, Does fall in travail with her fear.
    • And it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold, twins were in her womb. And it came to pass, when she travailed, that the one put out his hand: and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came out first,
  • 3

    obsoleteAn act of working; labor (US), labour (British).

  • 4

    obsoleteThe eclipse of a celestial object.

travailverb詞源 2/tɹəˈveɪl/

  • 1

    To toil.

    • [A]ll slothful persons, which will not travail for their livings, do the will of the devil.
    • The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days, and the number of years is hidden to the oppressor.
  • 2

    To go through the labor of childbirth.

    • A woman when she traveyleth hath sorowe, be cause her houre is come: but as sone as she is delivered off her chylde she remembreth no moare her anguysshe, for ioye that a man is borne in to the worlde.
    • And they iourneyed from Bethel: and there was but a litle way to come to Ephrath; and Rachel traueiled, and she had hard labour.

這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：

摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。