travaillaient
Travaillaient is a French verb form that corresponds to the third-person plural imperfect indicative of travailler, meaning they were working or they used to work. The imperfect describes actions that were ongoing in the past, habitual past actions, or background information in a narrative.
In the imperfect, regular -er verbs use the stem travaill- with the endings -ais, -ais, -ait, -ions,
The verb travailler itself originates from Old French travailler, which in turn comes from Latin tripaliare,
Usage notes: as an irregular-looking but regular-formation form within a regular -er verb paradigm, travaillaient shares