tortuous
adjective
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Be careful not to confuse tortuous with torturous. These two words are relatives—both ultimately come from the Latin verb torquere, which means "to twist," "to wind," or "to wrench"—but tortuous means "winding" or "crooked," whereas torturous means "painfully unpleasant." Something tortuous, such as a twisting mountain road, might also be torturous (if, for example, you have to ride up that road on a bicycle), but that doesn't make these words synonyms. The twists and turns that mark a tortuous thing can be literal ("a tortuous path" or "a tortuous river") or figurative ("a tortuous argument" or "a tortuous explanation"), but you should veer away from using the term if no implication of winding or crookedness is present.
Synonyms
Examples of tortuous in a Sentence
Alison Foreman, IndieWire, 16 Aug. 2024
But in scenes performed with miserable seriousness, Lily’s dilemma is more tortuous than liberating.
—Hannah Giorgis, The Atlantic, 10 Aug. 2024
The themes of this embarrassing episode were recapitulated throughout two more tortuous years of talks.
—Mike Gallagher, Foreign Affairs, 26 July 2023
The immensely complex history of this movie’s famously tortuous path to completion is tightly and allusively condensed in the documentary.
—Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 31 July 2024
See all Example Sentences for tortuous 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tortuous.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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“Tortuous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tortuous. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.
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tortuous
adjective
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