3 uses
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Definition
a difficult experience — especially one involving hard work or pain
- For the first time all that pure, spiritual, inward travail through which she had lived appeared on the surface.Book Twelve — 1812 (31% in)
- But owing to the superstition that the fewer the people who know of it the less a woman in travail suffers, everyone tried to pretend not to know; no one spoke of it, but apart from the ordinary staid and respectful good manners habitual in the prince's household, a common anxiety, a softening of the heart, and a consciousness that something great and mysterious was being accomplished at that moment made itself felt.Book Four — 1806 (58% in)
- She caught the unfinished word in its flight and took it straight into her open heart, divining the secret meaning of all Pierre's mental travail.Book Fifteen — 1812-13 (31% in)
There are no more uses of "travail" in War and Peace.
Typical Usage
(best examples)