ZebraWords.com - The Definition of 'Tortuous', Synonyms of 'Tortuous' & More on 'Tortuous'

1. Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0

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

Dictionary Results for tortuous:

1. WordNet® 3.0 (2006)

tortuous
    adj 1: highly complex or intricate and occasionally devious;
           "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" [syn:
           Byzantine, convoluted, involved, knotty,
           tangled, tortuous]
    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: tortuous,
       twisting, twisty, winding, voluminous]
    3: not straightforward; "his tortuous reasoning"

2. The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

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]

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