anfractuous

comparative more anfractuous · superlative most anfractuous

1. sinuous, twisty, winding.

   It was just that the story was anfractuous.

   1995, Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age […] , New York: Bantam Spectra, →ISBN, page 343

   4 more examples

   So intricate, ſo anfractuous, ſo unſearchable are the vvays of Providence.

   1668, Franciscus Euistor the Palæopolite [pseudonym; Henry More], “The Second Dialogue”, in Divine Dialogues, Containing Sundry Disquisitions & Instructions Concerning the Attributes of God and His Providence in the World. […], London: […] James Flesher, →OCLC, paragraph I, page 171

   1721 Thomas Gibson, M. D. Fellow of the College of Physicians, London: Anatomy of Humane Bodies epitomized. They are very anfractuous and winding, and (as was said) consist of many little Cells, that they should not pour out all the Seed contained in them, in one act of Copulation, but might retain it for several. They have no Communication one with another, not even in their very opening into the Urethra.

   Frequently two or more of these cavities united to form a larger anfractuous space, which might originally have been filled with an analogous tissue.

   1880, The American Medical Association, The Transactions of the American Medical Association, Volume 31, page 933

   Shy, iridescent, coltish, pelvically anfractuous, amply busted, given to diffident movements

   1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN

2. craggy, rugged, coarse, rough, uneven.

   Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks / Faced by the snarled and yelping seas.

   1920, T. S. Eliot, Poems, A. A. Knopf