tortuous

What it means

1. figurativelyoftenTwisted; having many turns; convoluted.

   2007 October 6, “Slogging on the Home Front”, editorial in The New York Times, It still takes almost half a year for the average veteran’s claim for disability benefits to be decided in a tortuous process that can involve four separate hearings.

   3 more examples

   The badger made his dark and tortuous hole on the side of every hill where the copsewood grew thick.

   1848, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume 1, Porter & Coates, page 243

   The Southern acquired them because the little Class "B4" 0-4-0 tanks were finding heavy modern rolling stock more and more of a handful, and at war's end the railway had nothing of suitable power but short wheelbase on its books to take their place on the more tortuous of the dock lines.

   1959 February, G. Freeman Allen, “Southampton—Gateway to the Ocean”, in Trains Illustrated, page 91

   But the early Tubes still tended to follow the public streets in order to save money, hence some tortuous curves.

   2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 109

2. astrologyOblique; applied to the six signs of the zodiac (from Capricorn to Gemini) that ascend most rapidly and obliquely.

   Infortunate ascendent tortuous.

   1872, Walter William Skeat, Chaucer's A Treatise on the Astrolabe

3. obsoleteInjurious; tortious.

In a sentence

The badger made his dark and tortuous hole on the side of every hill where the copsewood grew thick.

1848, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume 1, Porter & Coates, page 243

Where it comes from

1. Latintortuōsus
2. Old Frenchtortuos
3. Middle Englishtortuous
4. Englishtortuous

From Middle English tortuous, tortuose, from Anglo-Norman and Old French tortuos, from Latin tortuōsus, from tortus (“a twisting, winding”).