travail

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 25, 2025 is:

travail • \truh-VAIL\  • noun

Travail is a formal word, usually used in plural, that refers to a difficult experience or situation.

// The book describes the political travails of the governor during her first year in office.

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Examples:

"Written by Samy Burch, 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 Corp. to court for product liability, such as faulty rocket skates and defective aerial bombs." — Meg James, The Los Angeles Times, 20 Mar. 2025

Did you know?

Travail traces back to trepalium, a Late Latin word for an instrument of torture. We don't know exactly what a trepalium looked like, but the word's history gives us an idea. Trepalium comes from the Latin adjective tripalis, which means "having three stakes" (from tri-, meaning "three," and palus, meaning "stake"). Trepalium 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, travel.