Word of the Day:

“Christopher Nolan’s latest epic is an adaptation of the ancient Greek epic poem, The Odyssey. ... Homer’s poem is centered on Greek hero King Odysseus ... and his tortuous, 10-year journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.” — Lexy Perez, The Hollywood Reporter, 4 Jan. 2026

More example sentences

Be careful not to confuse tortuous with torturous. These two words are relatives—both ultimately come from the Latin verb torquēre, which means “to twist,” “to wind,” or “to wrench”—but tortuous means “winding” or “crooked,” whereas torturous means “painfully unpleasant.” (Its oldest meaning is “causing torture.”) 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.