1. One who performs physical labor as a service or for a livelihood; spec. one who does work requiring chiefly bodily strength or aptitude and little skill or training, as distinguished, e.g., from an artisan (often with defining word prefixed, as agricultural, bricklayer’s, dock, farm, mason’s labourer, etc.).
Statute of Labourers: the mod. designation of the statute De Servientibus (23 Edw. III), regulating the rate of wages.
c. 1325. Poem temp. Edw. II. (Percy), lxv. A wreched laborer That lyveth by hys hond.
1390. Gower, Conf., III. 6. It maketh me drawe out of the way In solein place by my selve, As doth a laborer to delve.
1442–3. Durham Acc. Rolls (Surtees), 275. Will’o Harpur laborere laboranti infra Infirmariam, 7s. 7d.
1470–85. Malory, Arthur, III. xi. 113. As Kynge Pellinore rode in that valey he met with a poure man a labourer.
1513. Douglas, Æneis, IV. xi. 91. With fire and swerd to persew and doun thring The laboraris [L. colonos] descend from Dardanus.
1543. trans. Act 23 Edw. III., heading, Here begynnethe the Statute of Labourers.
1548. Act 2 & 3 Edw. VI., c. 15 § 4. No Person … shall … let or disturb any … Brickmaker, Tilemaker, Plummer or Labourer.
1590. Greene, Neuer too late (1600), 119. The labourer to the fields his plough-swaynes guides.
1769. Falconer, Dict. Marine (1780), F ff 4. Travailleurs, the ordinary, or labourers, &c. employed to assist in fitting out shipping for the sea.
1799. J. Robertson, Agric. Perth, 342. Common labourers earn between one shilling and one shilling and three pence a-day.
1847. G. P. R. James, Convict, xx. I am a labourer by trade.
1878. Jevons, Primer Pol. Econ., 71. Bricklayers’ labourers refuse … to raise bricks to the upper parts of a building by a rope and winch.
1891. Daily News, 1 Sept., 3/1. An intelligent villager—not a labourer, but a man of the working-class.
† b. Mil.
1548. Hall, Chron., Hen. V., 56 b. The pyoners cast trenches and the laborers brought tymber. Ibid., Hen. VIII., 114. Of bill men five. M. of pioners and laborers .ii. M. .vi. C.
c. Labourer-in-trust: one of a number of officers (ranking next below the ‘clerks of works’) who formed part of the staff employed for the repairs of the royal palaces. The office ceased to exist in 1824.
1853. W. Jerdan, Autobiog., IV. 52. He became what is called a labourer-in-trust on the establishment which has the charge of the Royal palaces.
1884. Trans. Lond. & Middlesex Archæol. Soc., VI. 486. Mr. Adam Lee, the Labourer-in-Trust of the Houses of Parliament.
2. gen. One who does work of any kind, a worker.
a. 1420. Hoccleve, De Reg. Princ., 1348. Swych laborer þe kythe heere in þys lyf, Þat god þi soule, Reioise may.
c. 1511. 1st Eng. Bk. Amer. (Arb.), 33/1. They be … great labourers.
1562. Child-Marriages (1897), 97. The said Ellin was taken for an honest wenche and a good laborer.
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts (1658), 55. Which Kine are of the smallest body, and yet the greatest labourers.
1611. Bible, Luke x. 7. The labourer is worthy of his hire.
1785. Paley, Mor. Philos., Wks. 1825, IV. 25. To the labourer, every interruption is a refreshment.
1841. Trench, Parables, ix. (1877), 176. In the kingdom of heaven it is God who seeks his labourers, and not they who seek Him.
3. One of the class among colonial insects that performs the work of the community; a ‘worker.’
1601. Shaks., All’s Well, I. ii. 67. Since I nor wax nor honie can bring home, I quickly were dissolued from my hiue To giue some Labourers roome.
1781. Smeathman, in Phil. Trans., LXXI. 145. The working insects, which, for brevity, I shall generally call labourers.
1834. H. M’Murtrie, Cuvier’s The Animal Kingdom, 430. The neuters or labourers … as to size, are intermediate between the males and females.
Hence † Labouress, a female laborer.
1570. in Gutch, Coll. Cur., II. 10. For Clementes paynes in the kychen a daye, laberess.
1809. Spirit Publ. Jrnls. (1810), XIII. 164. Two other fellow-labouresses.
