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say it: TAWR-chuh-wuhs
tortuous is an adjective meaning "highly complex or intricate and occasionally devious". It is pronounced /ˈtɔɹtʃəwəs/ — TAWR-chuh-wuhs. It carries 3 recorded senses.
highly complex or intricate and occasionally devious
“the Byzantine tax structure”
“Byzantine methods for holding on to his chairmanship”
“convoluted legal language”
“convoluted reasoning”
“the plot was too involved”
“a knotty problem”
“got his way by labyrinthine maneuvering”
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave”
“tortuous legal procedures”
“tortuous negotiations lasting for months”
marked by repeated turns and bends
“a tortuous road up the mountain”
“winding roads are full of surprises”
“had to steer the car down a twisty track”
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for tortuous come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.