Belabour

Word of the Day for Monday, May 21, 2012

belabour \bih-LEY-ber\, verb:

1. To explain, worry about, or work more than is necessary.
2. To assail persistently, as with scorn or ridicule.
3. To beat vigorously; ply with heavy blows.
4. Obsolete. To labour at.

Yours and everybody else's, thought Swiffers, but he didn't wish to belabour the obvious.
-- Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

It is distasteful to the present writer to belabour any of his fellow writers, living or dead, and, except Boccaccio, who also stood for a detestable human trait, he has here avoided doing so.
-- Ford Madox Ford, The March of Literature

Neither of them possessed energy or wit to belabour me soundly; but they insulted me as coarsely as they could in their little way.
-- Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Like besot, belabour comes from the prefix be- which makes a verb out of a noun and the root labour meaning "to work." 

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com