3 definitions found From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]: Tortuous \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 leaf or corolla. [1913 Webster] The badger made his dark and tortuous hole on the side of every hill where the copsewood grew thick. --Macaulay. [1913 Webster] 2. Fig.: Deviating from rectitude; indirect; erroneous; deceitful. [1913 Webster] That course became somewhat lesstortuous, when the battle of the Boyne had cowed the spirit of the Jakobites. --Macaulay. [1913 Webster] 3. Injurious: tortious. [Obs.] [1913 Webster] 4. (Astrol.) Oblique; -- applied to the six signs of the zodiac (from Capricorn to Gemini) which ascend most rapidly and obliquely. [Obs.] --Skeat. [1913 Webster] Infortunate ascendent tortuous. --Chaucer. [1913 Webster] --{Tor"tu*ous*ly}, adv. -- {Tor"tu*ous*ness}, n. [1913 Webster] From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]: tortuous adj 1: 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" [syn: {Byzantine}, {convoluted}, {intricate}, {involved}, {knotty}, {labyrinthine}, {tangled}] 2: 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" [syn: {twisting}, {twisty}, {winding}] 3: not straightforward; "his tortuous reasoning" From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]: 139 Moby Thesaurus words for "tortuous": Gongoresque, Johnsonian, affected, ambagious, ambiguous, anamorphous, anfractuous, askew, asymmetric, bedizened, bent, big-sounding, billowing, billowy, bowed, circuitous, circumlocutory, cockeyed, complicated, contorted, convoluted, convolutional, cranky, crazy, crooked, crumpled, crunched, curled, curling, curvaceous, curvate, curvated, curve, curved, curvesome, curviform, curvilineal, curvilinear, curving, curvy, deceptive, declamatory, deviative, devious, distorted, elevated, euphuistic, flamboyant, flaming, flashy, flaunting, flexuose, flexuous, fulsome, garish, gaudy, geosynclinal, grandiloquent, grandiose, grandisonant, high-flowing, high-flown, high-flying, high-sounding, highfalutin, incurvate, incurvated, incurved, incurving, indirect, inkhorn, intricate, involute, involuted, involutional, involved, irregular, labyrinthine, lexiphanic, lofty, lopsided, lurid, magniloquent, mazy, meandering, meandrous, meretricious, misleading, nonsymmetric, one-sided, orotund, ostentatious, overdone, overelaborate, overinvolved, overwrought, pedantic, pompous, pretentious, recurvate, recurvated, recurved, recurving, rhetorical, rivose, rivulose, roundabout, ruffled, sensational, sensationalistic, sententious, serpentine, showy, sinuate, sinuose, sinuous, snaky, sonorous, sprung, stilted, tall, torsional, tortile, tricky, turning, twisted, twisting, twisty, undulant, unstraightforward, unsymmetric, wandering, warped, wavy, whorled, winding, wreathlike, wreathy, zigzag
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