TORTUOUS • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Tortuous

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/tˈɔrtʃəwəs/ Listen

adjective

Tortuous adj.

Bent in different directions; wreathed; twisted; winding; as, 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."

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."

Injurious: tortious. (Obs.)

(Astrol.) Oblique; applied to the six signs of the zodiac (from Capricorn to Gemini) which ascend most rapidly and obliquely. (Obs.) "Infortunate ascendent tortuous."

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Etymology of 'Tortuous'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Tortuous" Quotes from Famous Books

... him, he found himself harking back more and more to his own kind. The reeking smells of the Chinese quarter were spicy to him. He sniffed them with satisfaction as he passed along the street, for in his mind they carried him back to the narrow tortuous alleys of Canton swarming with life and movement. He regretted that he had cut off his queue to please Stella Allendale in the prenuptial days, and he seriously considered the advisability of shaving his crown and growing a new one. The dishes his highly paid chef concocted ...

— The House of Pride • Jack London

... waiting and watching beside the burrows where scent was fresh, and where, notwithstanding the noises reaching her from above, she could readily distinguish the sounds of stretching, gliding bodies moving to the surface through the tortuous passages below. ...

— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... him, he had set out to climb to the crater, vowing to show the flame-devil who was master. He had compelled the terrified Wadakimba to go with him a part of the way. The white tuan—was he really a god, as he declared himself to be?—had gone alone up the tortuous, fissured slopes, at times lost to sight in yellowish clouds of gas and steam, while his screams of vengeance came back to Wadakimba's ears. Overhead, Lakalatcha continued to rumble and quiver and clear his throat with great ...

— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... gliding, The waters dividing, The indolent batteau moved slowly along, The rowers, light-hearted, From sorrow long parted, Beguiled the dull moments with laughter and song: "Hurrah for the Rapid! that merrily, merrily Gambols and leaps on its tortuous way; Soon we will enter it, cheerily, cheerily, Pleased with its freshness, ...

— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster

... Vienna clogged the efforts of Morton Eden and Malmesbury to strengthen the Coalition against France. Eden complained that he behaved as an intriguing subaltern rather than as an ambassador; and rumour credibly ascribed his tortuous and ...

— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

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