hard labor

2 definitions found

hard labor - Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) :

  HARD LABOR, punishment. In those states where the penitentiary system has 
  been adopted, convicts who are to be imprisoned, as part of their 
  punishment, are sentenced to perform hard labor. This labor is not greater 
  than many freemen perform voluntarily, and the quantity required to be 
  performed is not at all unreasonable. In the penitentiaries of Pennsylvania 
  it consists in being employed in weaving, shoemaking, and such like 
  employments. 
  
  

hard labor - Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 :

  33 Moby Thesaurus words for "hard labor":
     arduousness, backbreaking work, burdensomeness, confinement,
     dismemberment, effortfulness, estrapade, galleys, hard job,
     hard work, impalement, imprisonment, incarceration, jailing,
     keelhauling, laboriousness, martyrdom, onerousness, oppressiveness,
     penal servitude, picketing, railriding, rock pile, strappado,
     strenuousness, tar-and-feathering, the gantlet, toilsomeness,
     torment, torture, troublesomeness, uphill work, warm work