Working hard at a physical or mental task, or struggling with effort.
From Old French 'labour,' which came from Latin 'laborare' (to toil). The word entered English in the 13th century and has consistently referred to hard physical work, though it expanded to include mental effort.
The word 'labor' is baked into English class consciousness—we have 'labor movements,' 'Labor Day,' and 'laborers' as a specific social category, but the original Latin root just meant 'to work hard,' showing how words absorb social meaning over centuries.
Reproductive labor ('in labor') conflated with wage labor; women's unpaid domestic/care work historically invisible in economic discourse, treated as non-work.
Specify context: 'wage labor', 'reproductive labor', 'care labor' to restore visibility to all forms. Avoid generic 'labor' that masks gendered work.
["working","toiling","specify labor type (emotional labor, care labor, wage labor)"]
Feminist economics credits women's unpaid labor as foundational to all economies; naming it specifically validates its value.
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