Meaning of TORTUOUS
| Pronunciation: | | 'torchoous
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 WordNet Dictionary |
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- [adj] not straightforward; "his tortuous reasoning"
- [adj] highly involved or intricate; "the Byzantine tax structure"; "convoluted legal language"; "convoluted reasoning"; "intricate needlework"; "an intricate labyrinth of refined phraseology"; "the plot was too involved"; "a knotty problem"; "got his way by labyrinthine maneuvering"; "Oh, what a tangled web we weave"- Sir Walter Scott; "tortuous legal procedures"; "tortuous negotiations lasting for months"
- [adj] marked by repeated turns and bends; "a tortuous road up the mountain"; "winding roads are full of surprises"; "had to steer the car down a twisty track"
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| | Synonyms: | | Byzantine, complex, convoluted, crooked, indirect, intricate, involved, knotty, labyrinthine, tangled, twisting, twisty, winding |
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| Webster's 1913 Dictionary |
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| | Definition: | | \Tor"tu*ous\, a. [OE. tortuos, L. tortuosus, fr. tortus
a twisting, winding, fr. torquere, tortum, to twist: cf. F.
tortueux. See Torture.]
1. Bent in different directions; wreathed; twisted; winding;
as, a tortuous train; a tortuous train; a tortuous leaf or
corolla.
The badger made his dark and tortuous hole on the
side of every hill where the copsewood grew thick.
--Macaulay.
2. Fig.: Deviating from rectitude; indirect; erroneous;
deceitful.
That course became somewhat lesstortuous, when the
battle of the Boyne had cowed the spirit of the
Jakobites. --Macaulay.
3. Injurious: tortious. [Obs.]
4. (Astrol.) Oblique; -- applied to the six signs of the
zodiac (from Capricorn to Gemini) which ascend most
rapidly and obliquely. [Obs.] --Skeat.
Infortunate ascendent tortuous. --Chaucer.
--{Tor"tu*ous*ly}, adv. -- {Tor"tu*ous*ness}, n.
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