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belabour

UK /bɪˈleɪ.bə/verb

belabour is a verb meaning “To beat or thump (someone) soundly” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled B-E-L-A-B-O-U-R and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 50 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does belabour mean?

verb

  1. 1

    UKobsoleteTo labour about; labour over; to work hard upon; to ply diligently.

  2. 2

    UKTo beat or thump (someone) soundly.

  3. 3

    UKTo attack (someone) verbally.

  4. 4

    UKTo discuss or explain (something) excessively or repeatedly; to harp on or overelaborate.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce belabour?

  • UK /bɪˈleɪ.bə/

Belabour has 3 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-belabour.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of belabour

  • belabours present, singular, he/she/it
  • belabouring participle, present
  • belaboured participle, past
  • belabor US

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is belabour?

Belabour appears about once in every 50 million words in written English, the 220,118th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Belabour in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Spanishvituperar (to attack someone verbally), labrar, laborear, repetir, extenderse, insistir (to harp on or overelaborate)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does belabour come from?

From be- (“on, upon, about, over”) + labour. Compare bework, betoil, beswink.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).