How to Use knotty in a Sentence

knotty

adjective
  • The Dead were mushy and hazy; The Fall were knotty and nasty.
    The Atlantic Culture Desk, The Atlantic, 22 Dec. 2021
  • One Shuck taught her to break open like the hinge on a knotty shell.
    Ian McNulty, NOLA.com, 2 Feb. 2021
  • Gas prices had fallen, and the roads were knotty with cars from across the world.
    Nathan Heller, The New Yorker, 22 July 2019
  • The trees look gnarled and knotty, like a desert bonsai.
    Rachel Fobar, National Geographic, 13 Dec. 2019
  • The point of the board is to take knotty decisions like these out of Facebook’s hands.
    Steven Levy, Wired, 28 Jan. 2020
  • At 60-odd hours and counting, Game of Thrones is dense with its own knotty lore.
    Scott Meslow, GQ, 31 July 2017
  • But the film posed a knotty question: How much is too much when your kid’s future is at stake?
    John Anderson, WSJ, 31 May 2018
  • The band’s intricate, at times proudly knotty music draws from some of the same sources as the Dead’s.
    George Varga, San Diego Union-Tribune, 21 Oct. 2021
  • That's a lot of frank talk before the fun stuff, but things can get a little knotty if both parties aren’t on the same page.
    Glamour, 29 Mar. 2019
  • There are many knotty reasons for the lag in laying new power lines.
    Aurora Almendral, Quartz, 13 Apr. 2023
  • The sign-and-trade rules are knotty, and so is the timeline if the Pelicans are looking to make this happen before the draft.
    Andrew Sharp, SI.com, 13 June 2019
  • But there is still one knotty problem for both sides: Taiwan.
    Elizabeth Robinson, NBC News, 16 Nov. 2023
  • The bar is the heart of the otherwise simple dining room, whose walls of white paint or red brick and knotty wood floors keep eyes focused on the food and drink.
    Washington Post, 20 Aug. 2021
  • Kids' rooms can take a lot of color, so rather than a classic knotty pine, the boys' room is green with orange accents and stripes.
    David A. Keeps, House Beautiful, 2 Oct. 2016
  • The kitchen has a Texas-style feel with knotty alder cabinetry, stone flooring and a custom copper vent-a-hood.
    Dallas News, 28 May 2020
  • Many have likened the process to a long and knotty divorce – but one with 28 interested parties.
    Nicola Slawson, The Christian Science Monitor, 3 Nov. 2017
  • Think spotted cowhide chairs in the lounge, fur throws at the edge of knotty wooden king-sized beds, and yurts decked out with antler chandeliers and leather couches.
    Cnt Editors, Condé Nast Traveler, 9 Oct. 2018
  • Gummy bears from turbine blades Vestas is far from the first to try to tackle this knotty problem.
    Laura Paddison, CNN, 28 May 2023
  • Is this the start of a contentious, unruly, hairy relationship that is sure to have a very knotty ending?
    Donna Freydkin, Allure, 13 Sep. 2017
  • Afrin has long been the site where the United States' knotty policy toward the Kurds was most evident.
    Tracy Wilkinson, latimes.com, 26 Jan. 2018
  • The clerks would help the Justices sort through briefs, research cited cases, and write memos on knotty questions of law.
    E. Tammy Kim, The New Yorker, 7 Feb. 2024
  • This could be wicked, gruesome fun, but there isn’t much of that in Truth or Dare, which gets lost in the needlessly knotty and constantly shifting rules of the curse.
    Gary Thompson, Philly.com, 11 Apr. 2018
  • Wolf said hearing Porter helped her wrestle with the knotty decision about whom to back in the primary.
    Benjamin Oreskes, Los Angeles Times, 2 May 2023
  • But as Slofstra’s game has made clear, the universe can be far knottier than a sock drawer.
    Quanta Magazine, 5 Mar. 2019
  • The all-instrumentals disc is full of knotty workouts and folk-jazz-funk fusion.
    AL.com, 30 July 2017
  • When these quickies started rolling in, Sears would work all night if necessary to attend to each knotty query.
    Catherine Musemeche, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 July 2022
  • The beetle ranch is lovely: slate tile, a Viking range, knotty oak paneling and a wood stove with a preening taxidermy turkey on the wall above it.
    Hannah Nordhaus, Scientific American, 8 Dec. 2017
  • By that time, Laplace and Comoy had already discovered what a knotty mess the local building process could be.
    WSJ, 24 Apr. 2021
  • Untangling knotty problems calls for patience, and who has that these days?
    Kc Cole, Wired, 20 Oct. 2021
  • The plotting is knotty, but the pleasures to be had from the international settings and stylish art direction are more than worth the work.
    Taylor Antrim, Vogue, 16 Nov. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'knotty.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: