travail

in a sentence

Though I couldn't claim to read the mind of a horse, I had the strange notion that this one was enjoying my travails.†  (source) Nicholas Sparks, Dear John, 2006

Though Chacko was not a card-holding member of the Party, he had been converted early and had remained, through all its travails, a committed supporter.†  (source) Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, 1997

Half-starved and disgruntled, they came from both Boston and from the British ships in harbor, and nearly always with bits of news or descriptions of their travails, word of which would spread rapidly through the camps the next day.†  (source) David McCullough, 1776, 2005

Six or seven times larger than even the most luxurious of office spaces, the knight's cabinet de travail resembled an ungainly hybrid of science laboratory, archival library, and indoor flea market.†  (source) Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, 2003

30 Came to my manor, grief after joyance, When Grendel became my constant visitor, Inveterate hater: I from that malice Continually travailed with trouble no little.†  (source) Author Unknown, Beowulf, 1892

One's own personal doings look small indeed, when faced with the momentous travails of History, which we can only trust are for the greater good.†  (source) Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace, 1996

And they shall be afraid; pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth; they shall be amazed at one another; their faces shall be as flames.†  (source) John Gardner, The Sunlight Dialogues, 1972

So there were several days of mechanical progress over the water, the horizon sea rising to grip after a cloud like a crab after a butterfly, with armored totter, then falling and travailing.†  (source) Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March, 1949

Here's the beginning of love at the end of our travail.†  (source) Ian McEwan, Atonement, 2001

for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children.†  (source) The Bible, Old Testament, 1611

And just as it seemed the travails could grow no worse, the telltale fog of the Gas came wafting malevolently through the shattered trees.†  (source) James A. Owen, Here, There be Dragons, 2006

I get up every morning and see the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain, as St. Paul says, and yet there am I, trafficking in glittering splendours with wealthy women and titled libertines, and pandering to the meanest vanities—I, who have health and strength enough for anything.†  (source) Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native, 1878

For I feel it, I feel it—infinite love is suffering too—yea, in the fulness of knowledge it suffers, it yearns, it mourns; and that is a blind self-seeking which wants to be freed from the sorrow wherewith the whole creation groaneth and travaileth.†  (source) George Eliot, Adam Bede, 1859