labour [ME] Labour came into English through French from Latin labor ‘toil, distress, trouble’, also found in laboratory [L16th] a place of work, and elaborate [L16th] ‘produced by much labour’. In the late 18th century the Scottish economist Adam Smith used the word labour, already used in this sense since the mid 17th century, technically for work directed towards providing the needs of a community, and paved the way for the use of labour in political contexts. The British Labour Party was formed in 1906 to represent ordinary working people. A task requiring enormous strength or effort is a labour of Hercules [LME] or a Herculean labour. In Greek mythology Hercules had superhuman strength and performed twelve tasks or ‘labours’ imposed on him as a penance for killing his children in a fit of madness.