tortuous Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. adjective satellite highly complex or intricate and occasionally devious
    Byzantine; tangled; convoluted; involved; knotty.
    • the Byzantine tax structure
    • Byzantine methods for holding on to his chairmanship
    • convoluted legal language
    • convoluted reasoning
    • 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
  2. adjective satellite marked by repeated turns and bends
    twisty; twisting; voluminous; winding.
    • a tortuous road up the mountain
    • winding roads are full of surprises
    • had to steer the car down a twisty track
  3. adjective satellite not straightforward
    • his tortuous reasoning

WordNet

Tor"tu*ous adjective
Etymology
OE. tortuos, L.tortuosus, fr.tortus a twisting, winding, fr. torquere, tortum, to twist: cf. F. tortueux. See Torture.
Definitions
  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.

Webster 1913