Tortuous

Part of speech: adjective (a.)

1. Bent in different directions; wreathed; twisted; winding; as, a tortuous train; a tortuous train; a tortuous leaf or corolla. The badger made his dark and tortuous hole on the side of every hill where the copsewood grew thick. Macaulay.

2. Fig.: Deviating from rectitude; indirect; erroneous; deceitful. That course became somewhat lesstortuous, when the battle of the Boyne had cowed the spirit of the Jakobites. Macaulay.

3. Injurious: tortious. [Obs.]

4. Oblique; -- applied to the six signs of the zodiac (from Capricorn to Gemini) which ascend most rapidly and obliquely. [Obs.] Skeat. Infortunate ascendent tortuous. Chaucer. --Tor"tu*ous*ly, adv. -- Tor"tu*ous*ness, n.