tortuous

CEFRC1

/ˈtɔːt͡ʃuːəs/

adjective

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

Examples

The five-year civil war has seen plenty of tortuous battlefield ups and downs.
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.

At a glance

Sits at C1 on the CEFR scale

Deep Dive

Extra meanings

Oblique; applied to the six signs of the zodiac (from Capricorn to Gemini) that ascend most rapidly and obliquely.
Twisted; having many turns; convoluted.

In context

The badger made his dark and tortuous hole on the side of every hill where the copsewood grew thick.
But the early Tubes still tended to follow the public streets in order to save money, hence some tortuous curves.
Infortunate ascendent tortuous.

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Question 1 · Quick check

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The word in print, with each source given in full.

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
Infortunate ascendent tortuous.
1872, Walter William Skeat, Chaucer's A Treatise on the Astrolabe
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

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