belabour
verbUK /bɪˈleɪ.bə/
Etymology From be- (“on, upon, about, over”) + labour. Compare bework, betoil, beswink.
2
UK To beat or thump (someone) soundly.
- 1856: Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Part III Chapter X, translated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling He saw the village; he was seen coming bending forward upon his horse, belabouring it with great blows, the girths dripping with blood.
- [F]ew country people there are who do not love to see two sturdy fellows thwack and belabour each other with quarter-staff, single-stick, or fists.1881, Walter Besant, James Rice, “How Kitty First Saw the Doctor”, in The Chaplain of the Fleet […], volume I, London: Chatto and Windus, […], →OCLC, part I (Within the Rules), page 82:
3
UK To attack (someone) verbally.
4
UK To discuss or explain (something) excessively or repeatedly; to harp on or overelaborate.
- 1961, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, inaugural speech Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belabouring those problems which divide us.
- And so, to belabour the school metaphor, diehard fans of both those fallen leaders resent this pair for snitching in class.2023 August 8, Janan Ganesh, “The oneness of Ron DeSantis and Rishi Sunak”, in Financial Times:
- Derived terms
- belabouredly, belabourer, belabour the point