belabour

present singular third person belabours · participle present belabouring · participle past belaboured · past belaboured · alternative US belabor

1. UKobsoletetransitiveTo labour about; labour over; to work hard upon; to ply diligently.
2. UKtransitiveTo 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.

   1 more example

   [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

   Synonyms: buffet, thrash

3. UKtransitiveTo attack (someone) verbally.
4. UKtransitiveTo 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.

   1 more example

   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