Definition

Adverb: * In a manner requiring or showing a lot of hard work, effort, and time; with great exertion and often slow, careful progress.

Usage

The adverb "laboriously" describes how an action is performed. It emphasizes that the action is done with significant physical or mental effort, is slow, painstaking, or tedious. It is typically placed before the main verb it modifies or at the end of a clause.

Examples

• She laboriously copied the ancient manuscript by hand.
• The ants laboriously carried crumbs many times their own size back to the nest.
• He worked laboriously through the night to finish the report.
• Progress on the construction was slow and laboriously achieved.

Advanced Usage

• "Laboriously gathered/collected/assembled": A common collocation emphasizing the slow, careful, and effortful process of acquiring or putting something together.
  • The evidence was laboriously gathered over a decade.
• "To proceed/advance/move laboriously": Describes slow, difficult progress.
  • The truck moved laboriously up the steep, muddy hill.

Variants and Related Words

• Laborious (adjective): Requiring considerable work and effort.
  • Digging the trench by hand was a laborious task.
• Labor (noun/verb): Work, especially hard physical work; to work hard.
  • The labor of building the wall took months.
  • They labored in the fields all day.

Synonyms

• Painstakingly
• Industriously
• Assiduously
• Diligently
• Tediously
• Slowly
• With effort

Antonyms

• Easily
• Effortlessly
• Quickly
• Rapidly

Adverb

1. in a laborious manner
   • their lives were spent in committee making decisions for others to execute on the basis of data laboriously gathered for them