Definition of "backbreaking" [backbreaking]

• Demanding great exertion; arduous and exhausting. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "To create intrigue and start a conversation amongst city folk stimulating awareness about where veggies come from and the men and women who engage in backbreaking work to grow them."
• "They had taken on a job that is accurately described as backbreaking."
• "The slim, handsome woman vividly recalls the backbreaking work from sunrise to sunset clearing forests, digging irrigation canals and planting rice; hunting for frogs, rats and snakes to eat; seeing corpses piled high on oxcarts rumbling off to mass graves; her son dying on a garbage heap as he rummaged for fish bones to eat."