means Physical or mental work, especially the hard, sustained kind — and, by extension, the collective body of workers who perform it.

from From Latin 'labor,' meaning toil, hardship, or exertion — the same root that gives us 'laborious' and 'elaborate' (literally 'worked out'). It traveled into English through Old French 'labour' in the medieval period. The Latin word carried a heavier weight than mere 'work'; it implied strain and suffering, which is why 'labor' also came to name the pains of childbirth — the body's most ancient hard work.