travailous

English

Etymology

From Middle English travailous (“laborious, wearisome”), from Anglo-Norman travaillous, Old French travaillos (“tiring, painful”). Equivalent to travail +‎ -ous.

Adjective

travailous (comparative more travailous, superlative most travailous)

1. (obsolete, now rare) Causing or involving travail; laborious; toilsome.
   • c. 1603–1604, William Shakespeare, edited by Michael Neill, Othello, the Moor of Venice (Oxford World's Classics), Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, published 2008, →ISBN, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii], page 223, lines 138–139:

     […] of my redemption thence, / And portance in travailous history,

     Suggested by Richard Proudfoot to be the correct interpretation of the First Folio's "trauellours historie", whereas other editions interpret it as "travel's" or "traveler's"

   • 1888, Charles M[ontagu] Doughty, chapter III, in Travels in Arabia Deserta, London: Jonathan Cape Ltd. & The Medici Society Limited, page 59:

     A pined and jaded man he was before his middle days, and unlikely to live to full age. Better his mother had been barren, than that her womb should have borne such a sorry travailous life!

References

• “travailous, adj.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Further reading

• “travailous”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “travailous, adj.”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.

Middle English

Alternative forms

• travaylous, travaylouse, travyliouse, travailouse, travaillous, traveilous, traveilouse, traveillous, travalous, travelous, travelouse, travelos, travelyous, travellous, travylus

Etymology

From Anglo-Norman travaillous, Old French travaillos.

Adjective

travailous

1. hardworking, industrious
2. laborious, taxing, wearisome
3. perilous, inhospitable, inaccessible
4. woeful, pained, wretched
   • c. 1382–1395, John Wycliffe [et al.], edited by Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden, The Holy Bible, […], volume II, Oxford: At the University Press, published 1850, →OCLC, Job VII:3–4, page 682, column 1:

     As an hert desireth shadewe, and as an hirid man abideth the ende of his werc; so and I hadde voide monethis, and trauailous nyʒtis I noumbride out to me.

     Like a servant desireth the shade, and like a hired man waiteth for the end of his work day; so I have had empty months, and I have numbered travailous nights to me.

5. distressing, painful

References

• “travailǒus, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.