1589 G. Puttenham Arte Eng. Poesie iii. xxii. 216 The Greekes call it Periergia, we call it ouer-labor, iumpe with the originall.

1870 Academy May 199/2 It is a very beautiful and finished piece of work, and full of subtle melody, but sometimes obscure with more than the obscurity of the dreamy subject, and sometimes with a certain sense of over labour in it.

1894 Dict. National Biogr. at Müller, William John He could probably suggest more, with fewer touches, than any other painter of his time. He never spoilt the freshness of his work by over-labour or detail.

1600 N. Breton Melancholike Humours in Wks. (1879) I. 10 My poore heart, both day and night..By ouerlabour of my braine doth finde my spirit spoiled.

1799 F. Burney Jrnls. & Lett. (1973) IV. 312 Your creepings are surely the effect of over labour of the brain.

1806 Lady Morgan Wild Irish Girl I. ii. 71 By over labour, over heatings, fatigue and colds..these poor adventurers return home to their expecting families with fevers lurking in their veins.

1839 H. W. Longfellow Hyperion II. iv. vii. 202 In the solitary, singular enthusiast, who had just left them, he saw only another melancholy victim to solitude and over-labor of the brain.

1863 F. E. Maning Old New Zealand (ed. 2) 104 We may then imagine the excitement, the over-labour, the hardship, the starvation.

1880 Trans. Indiana State Med. Soc. 97 There are twenty persons who die prematurely from over-labor where one dies from a too limited amount of exercise.

2007 G. Standing in A. Buğra & K. Ağartan Reading Karl Polanyi for Twenty-first Cent. iv. 87 In Japan, there has been a rise in karoshi—death from over-labor.

1530 J. Palsgrave Lesclarcissement 648/2 I overlabour, je me surlaboure,..he overlaboured hym selfe yesterday.

1598 R. Grenewey tr. Tacitus Descr. Germanie iii, in Annales 265 It is a rare matter to beat their slaues, or ouer-labour or emprison them.

1607 Dobsons Drie Bobbes sig. D2 Wearied with ouer-labouring themselues the weeke precedent, they slept it out till halfe houre past seauen.

1647 J. Fletcher & P. Massinger Custome of Countrey III. iii. 12 Sul. Shall I never see a lusty man againe? Ja. Faith Mistris You do so over-labour 'em when you have 'em, And so dry-founder 'em, they cannot last.

1673 Sack-full of Newes sig. B3 He had made six baskets, and knew it not, and on the morrow began to make the seventh: but he had overlabored himself & forgot to ring to Masse.

a1718 W. Penn Maxims in Wks. (1726) I. 848 If any Point over-labours thy Mind, divert and relieve it, by some other Subject.

1791 W. Cowper tr. Homer Iliad III. xvii. 481 Sweating they go, And overlabour'd to faint weariness, so they the body bore.

1803 J. Kenney Society, with Other Poems 11 Those careful thoughts that oft O'er labour Reason to untimely ruin.

1993 DDoi Moi in Vietnam in alt.war.vietnam (Usenet newsgroup) 7 May They just came back from those hellish New Economic Zone where they were starved..overlabored.

1588 R. Greene Perimedes sig. E3 Nature in them seemeth to be ouerlaboured with arte.

1797 E. Burke Lett. Peace Regicide Directory France iii, in Wks. VIII. 304 Over-labouring a point of this kind, has the direct contrary effect from what we wish.

1823 Examiner 673/2 Earl Grey does not..over-labour a part of a subject.

1859 Athenæum 14 May 641/1 Ritson overlaboured and overloaded his prefatory matter to the ‘Robin Hood Ballads’: he wrote..too much in an antiquarian style.

1926 Amer. Econ. Rev. 16 461 He has much to say about the necessity of using a price, rather than a value, concept; but it appears he overlabors this point.

1959 Dict. National Biogr. 1941–50 at Walpole, Sir Hugh Seymour He would over-labour a single character as a somewhat nebulous symbol.

1988 Man 23 56 Malinowski noted the structural oppositions of male and female spaces in Trobriand society, but he never wished to over-labour the point.

1607 G. Markham Cavelarice i. 67 The good stond horse will euer beate and ouer labour the good Gelding.

1632 W. Lithgow Totall Disc. Trav. viii. 373 These Sauages..ouer-laboured vs with Bastinadoes.