travail

The author of the novel “Good Company” on tales of travail from Edith Wharton, Elena Ferrante and others.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026

Mulaney's second personal travail – which he does not address at all – was his highly publicized divorce from Anna-Marie Tendler and subsequent relationship with Olivia Munn with whom he had a child.

From Salon ● May 3, 2023

“Woman Ironing,” she said, “is Picasso’s quintessential image of travail and fatigue.”

From New York Times ● Jan. 29, 2023

Hurston was a “keen strategist of racial deference,” and her views on America’s racial travail clashed with those of another project writer and seminal Black author, Richard Wright.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 8, 2021

Never again will her life be free of travail and disappointment in her three blind mice.

From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver

That and oil price buoyancy pushed the peso up 10% against the dollar this year despite budgetary travails.

From Barron's ● Jun. 22, 2026

Yet I’ve been optimistic amid our industry’s stresses and travails.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 19, 2026

Over the last month while in hospice, Frank did a number of interviews with US media, commenting on his life's work, the current political mood and the travails of the left.

From BBC ● May 20, 2026

“Welcome to Wrexham,” the Emmy-winning docuseries that follows the tributes and travails of a lower-division soccer club in North Wales, isn’t a reality show.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 12, 2026

She tells me about her recent medical travails, including, as she says, “my two fake hips and my fake knee.”

From "Drama High" by Michael Sokolove

English translations of the Bible often use it in this context, such as in Isaiah 66:7: “Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child.”

From Washington Post ● Oct. 10, 2020

It be like knowing you are what praying women had in mind when they travailed for tomorrow.

From "Watch Us Rise" by Renée Watson and Ellen Hagan

For the water-side—where we stand with those for whom we have travailed in soul, when for the first time they publicly confess their faith in Christ—is a sacred place to us.

From Lotus Buds by Amy Carmichael

He was terribly set upon playing the piano and little guessed the secret of his inner struggle—the secret of the sad spirit that travailed against itself.

From Melomaniacs by James Huneker

The priest having read the text as chance might lead him, read the vespers for Sunday;—and you must know he travailed hard, that the offerings should be worth something to him.

From Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers by William Alexander Clouston

Some purpose, in the stress Of travailing tongues, to birth finds not a way: What all would utter, none has wit to say.

From Etain the Beloved and Other Poems by James Henry Cousins

It was truly a marvellous spectacle to see this giant savage, travailing in the throes of a new birth.

From The Frontiersman A Tale of the Yukon by H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody

This same similitude is used by our Master Jesus Christ; for when he speaks of the troubles of his church, he compares them to the pains of a woman travailing in child-birth.

From The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4. by John Knox

Our pains were not small or light, but travailing daily from chamber to chamber.

From Hampton Court by E. W. Haslehust

And at last she could distinguish faintly, far-away, as by some new sense, a murmur of the twilight universe, the never-ending moan of this travailing nature.

From Gilian The Dreamer His Fancy, His Love and Adventure by Neil Munro