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
Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 24 June 2024
It’s been just over six months since Ratcliffe won a tortuous battle to buy 28% of Manchester United, once the prime asset of English football and still among the world’s biggest names.
—Amanda Gerut, Fortune Europe, 20 June 2024
This was a deeply revealing game and mildly psychologically tortuous to play, because the contestants genuinely didn’t know if they’d been tagged in an aluminum-free deodorant post or not.
—Bethy Squires, Vulture, 17 May 2024
Only a tortuous week later did Holifield discover that on the day she was banned, Instagram sent three warnings to a secondary email on her account, each saying that someone had reported one of her videos from last year for trademark infringement.
—Paresh Dave, WIRED, 19 Apr. 2024
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“Tortuous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tortuous. Accessed 15 Jul. 2024.
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tortuous
adjective
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