tortuous : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

English Dictionary: tortuous	by the DICT Development Group
2 results for tortuous
From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
tortuous adj 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" Synonym(s): Byzantine, convoluted, involved, knotty, tangled, tortuous 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" Synonym(s): tortuous, twisting, twisty, winding, voluminous not straightforward; "his tortuous reasoning"
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Tortuous \Tor"tuous\, 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"tuously}, adv. -- {Tor"tuousness}, n.