tortuous
full of twists, turns, or complicated indirectness
Word origin: From Latin torquere, to twist.
Tortuous in a sentence
Here are example sentences showing tortuous in a sentence.
The tortuous mountain road forced drivers to slow to a crawl at every bend.
The treaty's tortuous ratification process wound through four committees and two constitutional challenges.
Quick GRE check
3 questions, about 2 minutes. How would you do on the real test?
Verbal · Text Completion
Critics initially dismissed the composer's late works as merely blank, but later scholars recognized in them a deliberate restraint that concealed considerable technical sophistication.
Using “tortuous” well
Tortuous means full of twists, turns, or complicated indirectness, applied to roads or to reasoning. Do not confuse it with torturous, which means causing pain or torment.
More GRE words starting with T
understood or implied without being openly stated
habitually reserved and uncommunicative in speech
only loosely relevant; diverging from the main point
perceptible by touch or concrete enough to be grasped
to twist together into a confused or knotted mass
equivalent in effect or value to something else
to dull or damage the luster, reputation, or purity of something
needlessly repeating an idea using different words
Questions about “tortuous”
See these words the way the GRE tests them.
Take the free 39-minute GRE Quick Mock Test and meet words like this inside real Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence questions, with a worked solution for every answer.