belabor

This one starts in the field, not the classroom. In the mid-1400s, belabored could mean land that had been worked over—literally cultivated, as if a stubborn patch of earth had been coaxed and prodded into productivity. Then English did what it often does: it took a physical action and turned it into a social one, so by the 1590s you could belabor a person with blows or with words, pounding the same point like a hammer at a blacksmith’s bench. The joke is that the prefix be- is doing the odd little English trick of meaning “on” or “upon,” so belabor is basically “work upon,” and that same labor family gives you collaborate, laborious, and labeur in French. One root says “apply yourself,” the other says “toil,” and together they create a word that feels like someone refusing to leave the issue alone. Tomorrow, just remember: to belabor something is to put it on the worktable and keep hitting it until everyone wishes you’d stop.