Hypertext Webster Gateway: "tortuous"
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (web1913)
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 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.
From WordNet (r) 1.7 (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"
Additional Hypertext Webster Gateway Lookup
Gateway by dict@stokkie.net
stock only wrote the gateway and does not have any control over the contents;
see the Webster Gateway FAQ,
and also the Back-end/database links and credits.