DICT.TW Dictionary Taiwan

 Tor·tu·ous a.
 1. Bent in different directions; wreathed; twisted; winding; as, 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. Astrol. Oblique; -- applied to the six signs of the zodiac (from Capricorn to Gemini) which ascend most rapidly and obliquely. [Obs.]
    Infortunate ascendent tortuous.   --Chaucer.
 --Tor*tu*ous*ly, adv. -- Tor*tu*ous*ness, n.
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 tortuousness
      n : a tortuous and twisted shape or position; "they built a tree
          house in the tortuosities of its boughs"; "the acrobat
          performed incredible contortions" [syn: tortuosity, torsion,
           contortion, crookedness]