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Word of the Day for Saturday, August 8, 2009travail \truh-VAYL; TRAV-ayl\, noun: 1. Painful or arduous work; severe toil or exertion. For all his travails and tragedy, he remains boyishly delighted with all life has to offer. Every sport entails physical and mental travail, but the decathlon is a veritable factory of pain. The author of the Book of Jeremiah, for example, notes the "cry of a woman in travail, the anguish of one bringing forth her first child, gasping for breath, stretching out her hands crying 'Woe is me!'" Travail is from Old French traveillier, travaillier, from Vulgar Latin tripalium, "a three-staked instrument of torture," from Latin tripalis, "three-staked," from tri-, "three" + palus, "a stake." | |||||||||
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