30 June 2017
belabour
[bih-ley-ber]
verb (used with object)
1. to explain, worry about, or work at (something) repeatedly or more than is necessary:
He kept belaboring the point long after we had agreed.
2. to assail persistently, as with scorn or ridicule:
a book that belabors the provincialism of his contemporaries.
3. to beat vigorously; ply with heavy blows.
4. Obsolete. to labor at.
Also, especially British, belabour.
Origin of belabor
1590-1600 First recorded in 1590-1600; be- + labor
Dictionary.com
Examples from the Web for belabor
Historical Examples
It is exhausting to belabour a thick-skinned and obstinate animal with a stick.
Blue Lights
R.M. Ballantyne
Have you any particular spite at my door, that you belabour it in that style?
Macaria
Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
He made himself greatly dreaded by his orchestra, whom he used to belabour over the head with his fiddle.
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI.
Various
He said he would track him out and belabour him as he deserved.’
Penshurst Castle
Emma Marshall
At one time some worthy fellow entreats us to take up the public cudgel and belabour a blatant Economist.
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 68, No. 417, July, 1850
Various
belabour thy brains, as to whom it would be well to question.
Scribner’s Magazine, Volume 26, July 1899
Various
He chased the sheep into a corner of the enclosure, and proceeded to belabour them with a heavy stick.
The Pilots of Pomona
Robert Leighton
He seized a stick that was lying on the ground, and began to belabour the hag with all his might.
The Mantle and Other Stories
Nicholas Gogol
So saying she snatched up the ladle from the dripping-pan, and threatened to belabour him with it.
Boscobel: or, the royal oak
William Harrison Ainsworth
He may hit me on the head and they may belabour me from behind.
White Nights and Other Stories
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Anagram
a blue orb
Today’s quote
Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.
– Pietro Aretino
On this day
30 June 1934 – Night of the Long Knives (Operation Hummbingbird), in which Hitler purges his political enemies.
30 June 1937 – The world’s first emergency telephone number, 999, is introduced in London.
30 June 1950 – US President Truman sends troops to South Korea to assist in repelling the North Korean Army. He calls on the Soviet Union to negotiate a withdrawal from North Korea, however, the Soviets blame South Korea for an unprovoked attack.
30 June 1959 – US fighter jet, an F-100 Super Sabre, crashes into the Japanese Miyamori Elementary School at Ishikawa (now Uruma) on the US occupied island of Okinawa, Japan, killing 11 students, 6 other people from the neighbouring area and injuring 210 (including 156 students). The pilot, Captain John G. Schmitt Jr, had ejected to safety. The incident was one of many tragic events the Okinawans have suffered since the US occupation.