The Latin labour meant toil, work, the put-ting forth of effort; it appears to be akin to robur, or strength, preserved in our ?robust.? While labor and work are used interchange-ably, the latter is a more generic word, and admits of a much wider range of uses. Work may be either hard or easy but labour is always hard; work is used of all sorts of effort; labour refers generally to muscular effort, followed by fatigue. When labour is kept up unremittingly it is toil; and when toil is uninteresting, uninspiring, and poorly paid it is drudgery. When working, one?s ambition is to succeed with it; when labouring, one looks forward to resting from it; hence, it is from labour that we seek refreshment, not from work. |
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