tortuousness

tor·tu·ous

(tôr′cho͞o-əs)

adj.

1. Having or marked by repeated turns or bends; winding or twisting: a tortuous road through the mountains.

2. Not straightforward; circuitous; devious: a tortuous plot; tortuous reasoning.

3. Highly involved; complex: tortuous legal procedures.

[Middle English, from Anglo-Norman, from Latin tortuōsus, from tortus, a twisting, from past participle of torquēre, to twist; see terk^w- in Indo-European roots.]

tor′tu·ous·ly adv.

tor′tu·ous·ness n.

Usage Note: Although tortuous and torturous both come from the Latin word torquēre, "to twist," their primary meanings are distinct. Tortuous means "twisting" (a tortuous road) or by extension "complex" or "devious." Torturous refers primarily to torture and the pain associated with it. However, torturous also can be used in the sense of "twisted, strained, belabored" and tortured is an even stronger synonym: a tortured analogy.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Noun	1.	tortuousness - a tortuous and twisted shape or position; "they built a tree house in the tortuosities of its boughs"; "the acrobat performed incredible contortions" crookedness, torsion, tortuosity, contortion distorted shape, distortion - a shape resulting from distortion
	2.	tortuousness - puzzling complexity complicatedness, knottiness, complication complexity, complexness - the quality of being intricate and compounded; "he enjoyed the complexity of modern computers"

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References in periodicals archive ?

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They have, therefore, not only assumed a tactically weak position but they have endangered the whole negotiating process, already notable for its tortuousness. Japan's move also comes a month after a placatory Washington agreed to remove North Korea from its list of terror states.