All 3 Uses of
travail
in
War and Peace
- 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.†
Chpt 4travail = difficult experience
- For the first time all that pure, spiritual, inward travail through which she had lived appeared on the surface.†
Chpt 12 *
- 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.†
Chpt 15
Definitions:
-
(1)
(travail) a difficult experience -- especially one involving hard work or pain
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much less commonly, travail can refer to a woman in labor during the birth of a baby.