From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishtortuoustor‧tu‧ous /ˈtɔːtʃuəs $ ˈtɔːr-/ adjective 1 SGBENDa tortuous path, stream, road etc has a lot of bends in it and is therefore difficult to travel along a tortuous path over the mountains to Kandahar2 COMPLICATEDcomplicated and long and therefore confusing The book begins with a long, tortuous introduction. —tortuously adverb
Examples from the Corpus
tortuous• Your progress is slow and tortuous.• The legal ramifications of the Hains case are tortuous.• But it has been a tortuous and cumbersome journey.• His rather tortuous explanation seems to come to this.• Most of the villages are accessible only by boat or along tortuous jungle trails.• a tortuous mountain trail• It took six months of tortuous negotiations to reach an agreement.• At last, an end to the tortuous negotiations was in sight.• They walked on, wandering through a warren of tortuous passageways where the noise and stench grasped Athelstan by the throat.• It was a tortuous, switchback ride.• The people came from Bosanska Gradiska, 35 miles away on a twisting, tortuous track through the Snake Mountains.• a twisting, tortuous track through the Snake MountainsOrigin tortuous (1300-1400) Old French tortueux, from Latin tortuosus, from tortus; → TORTURE1 