travail

noun

1. (literary)Arduous or painful exertion; excessive labor, suffering, hardship.

   “Great trauail is created to al men, and an heauie yoke vpon the children of Adam, from the day of their comming forth of their mothers wombe, vntil the day of their burying, into the mother of al. […]”

   “But as every thing of price, so this doth require travail.”

   “Travell and pleasure, most unlike in nature, are notwithstanding followed together by a kind of I wot not what natural conjunction[…].”

   “But I know that to-day there are great questions calling for an answer, wrongs clamoring to be righted, a people in travail that pleads for ease!”

   “He had thought of making a destiny for himself, through laborious and untiring travail.”

2. Specifically, the labor of childbirth.

   “The lady shrieks and, well-a-near, Does fall in travail with her fear.”

   “And it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold, twins were in her womb. And it came to pass, when she travailed, that the one put out his hand: and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came out first,”

3. (countable, obsolete)An act of working; labor (US), labour (British).
4. (obsolete)The eclipse of a celestial object.
5. (alt-of, obsolete)Obsolete form of travel.
6. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative form of travois (“a kind of sled”)

verb

1. To toil.

   “[A]ll slothful persons, which will not travail for their livings, do the will of the devil.”

   “The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days, and the number of years is hidden to the oppressor.”

   “Other poet travailing in this plain high-way of paſtoral know I none.”

2. To go through the labor of childbirth.

   “A woman when she traveyleth hath sorowe, be cause her houre is come: but as sone as she is delivered off her chylde she remembreth no moare her anguysshe, for ioye that a man is borne in to the worlde.”

   “And they iourneyed from Bethel: and there was but a litle way to come to Ephrath; and Rachel traueiled, and she had hard labour.”