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.
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Examples of tortuous in a Sentence
Borys Kit, The Hollywood Reporter, 14 Feb. 2025
Advertisement The deal follows months of tortuous negotiations led by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, with the Qataris regularly expressing frustration and threatening to walk away at one point.
—Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times, 19 Jan. 2025
The pact follows months of tortuous, on-off negotiations conducted by Egyptian and Qatari mediators, with the backing of the United States, and comes just ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
—Andrew Mills, Nidal Al-Mughrabi, and Maayan Lubell, The Christian Science Monitor, 15 Jan. 2025
Each has a tortuous history of friendship and enmity with Moscow, and both have faced obstacles in asserting independent statehood.
—Nicholas Waller, Foreign Affairs, 1 Apr. 2015
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Cite this Entry
“Tortuous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tortuous. Accessed 22 Feb. 2025.
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tortuous
adjective
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