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

When I came to my cabin after trying to help Charley in his travail, Robbie was tying a trouble light to the iron frame of my sad bed.

From "Travels with Charley in Search of America" by John Steinbeck

Unlike Alexander, the vice president’s travails are a result of his own doing.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 12, 2026

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

From Barron's ● Jun. 22, 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

You can be scared into saving by reading the travails of a person who has realized that they’ve been left behind with Social Security and little else.

From MarketWatch ● May 13, 2026

The queen had to find another defender or today’s ordeal would be the least of her travails.

From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin

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

His mind was in a turmoil of doubt and anger—doubt as to the nature of the strange obsession under which he travailed, and anger directed chiefly against himself.

From The Song of the Wolf by Frank Mayer

Come, and satisfy the soul that travailed for you in Olivet!

From Old Wine and New Occasional Discourses by Joseph Cross

The ancient alchemists travailed to transmute the baser metals into gold; in these days whole townships are at work transmuting gold and silver into pewter.

From Greene Ferne Farm by Richard Jefferies

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

From Hampton Court by E. W. Haslehust

The great vision is the woman travailing in pain to be delivered of a manchild.

From Studies in Prophecy by Arno C. Gaebelein

And while the brain that was to rule France as a tribune-king, was thus evolving its idle progeny, the womb of a Corsican woman near him was travailing with him who was to be Napoleon!

From Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. by Various

I had believed too in a Republican France, which is yet only in the womb of time, to be born after many pangs and sore travailing.

From A Few Words About the Devil And Other Biographical Sketches and Essays by Charles Bradlaugh

Both are directly hastening the emergence of the spiritual World Order stirring in the womb of a travailing age.

From Messages to America by Shoghi Effendi