> as lemmas

c1475 (c1450) P. Idley Instr. to his Son (Cambr.) (1935) ii. B. l. 2217 (MED) What availleth hooly scripture and doctours techyng..When men in hir hertis haue noo deuocioun? It is but laboure lost and veyn mocioun.

a1513 W. Dunbar Poems (1998) I. 258 The labour lost and liell seruice.

1523 Ld. Berners tr. J. Froissart Cronycles I. lvii. f. xxxii/2 And whan they had well aduysed euery thyng they thought it was but a lost labour.

1535 Bible (Coverdale) Psalms cxxvii. 2 It is but lost labour that ye ryse vp early.

a1626 L. Andrewes 96 Serm. (1629) 307 All that Christ hath done for us is in vaine; whose paines and sufferings we ought specially to tender, knowing that Supra omnem laborem labor irritus, No labour to lost labour; and Christ then hath lost His labour for us.

1653 N. Culpeper Eng. Physitian 14 Garden Arrach. Called also Orach, and Orage; It is so commonly known to every Houswife, it were but labor lost to describe it.

1747 J. Wesley Primitive Physick p. xviii Add to the rest (for it is not labour lost) that Old Unfashionable Medicine, Prayer.

1797 in tr. C. C. de Rulhière Hist. or Anecd. Revol. Russia Note p. iii They might send him to the Bastille, nay force his manuscript from him, but..it would prove labour lost, because it was engraven on the table of his memory.

1806 M. Edgeworth Leonora II. lviii. 76 It is lost labour to civilize him, for sooner or later he will hottentot again.

1863 Times 25 Dec. 4/5 The serious criticism of most novels is a lost labour.

1947 French Rev. 21 62 Hall and Denoeu have performed here many a pedagogical labor of love, but much too often it is labor lost.

1991 E. T. H. Brann World of Imagination iii. i. 408 The attempt to verify the representational relation by recovering the projection would be lost labor.