It's the Word of the Day for April 25th.
Today's word is travail, also pronounced travail and spelled T-R-A-V-A-I-L.
Travail is a noun.
It's a formal word usually used in the plural that refers to a difficult experience or situation.
Here's the word used in a sentence from the LA Times.
Written by Sammy Birch,
the film Coyote vs. Acme follows the travails of the desert denizen who is tired of being slammed with Acme products
as he tries to outsmart the roadrunner.
Coyote finally decides to hire a lawyer to take the Acme Corporation to court for product liability,
such as faulty rocket skates and defective aerial bombs.
The word travail traces back to trepalium, a late Latin word for an instrument of torture.
We don't know exactly what a tripalium looked like, but the word's history gives us an idea.
Tripalium comes from the Latin adjective tripalis, which means having three stakes,
from tri meaning three and palus meaning stake.
Tripalium eventually led to the Anglo-French verb travailler, meaning to torment,
but also, more mildly, to trouble and to journey.
The Anglo-French noun travail was borrowed into English in the 13th century,
along with another descendant of travailler, the word travel.
With your Word of the Day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.
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