laborabamus

Laborabamus is a Latin verb form: the first-person plural imperfect indicative active of laborare, a regular first-conjugation verb meaning to work or to toil. The imperfect in Latin expresses past ongoing or habitual action, so laborabamus translates roughly as “we were working” or “we used to work.”

Morphology and formation: the imperfect is created by inserting the marker ba- into the present stem and adding the standard personal ending for the first person plural. For laborare, this yields laborabamus, alongside related forms such as laborabam (I was working), laborabas (you were working), laborabat, laborabatis, and laborabant. The form laborabamus thus shows the ba- marker and the plural ending -mus.

Usage: in classical Latin, the subject is often implied by the verb form, but the pronoun nos (we) can be used for emphasis. The imperfect is commonly used to describe background scenes in narratives or habitual past actions. It contrasts with the aorist or perfect forms that express completed past actions (e.g., laboravimus “we worked” or “we have worked”). In translation, context determines whether laborabamus should be rendered as “we were working” or “we used to work.”

Etymology and related forms: laborare derives from the Latin root labor-, meaning work or toil; related forms appear across the Romance languages with a similar imperfect construction. The paradigm of the 1st conjugation (including laborabamus) provides a pattern for other verbs in -are in the imperfect tense.

Example: Nos in agro laborabamus. Translation: We were working in the fields.