What is "tortuousness"

Tortuous \Tor"tu*ous\, a. [OE. tortuos, L. tortuosus, fr. tortus a twisting, winding, fr. torquere, tortum, to twist: cf. F. tortueux. See Torture.]

1. Bent in different directions; wreathed; twisted; winding; as, a tortuous train; a tortuous leaf or corolla.

   The badger made his dark and tortuous hole on the side of every hill where the copsewood grew thick.
   --Macaulay.

2. Fig.: Deviating from rectitude; indirect; erroneous; deceitful.

   That course became somewhat lesstortuous, when the battle of the Boyne had cowed the spirit of the Jakobites.
   --Macaulay.

3. Injurious: tortious. [Obs.]

4. (Astrol.) Oblique; -- applied to the six signs of the zodiac (from Capricorn to Gemini) which ascend most rapidly and obliquely. [Obs.]
   --Skeat.

   Infortunate ascendent tortuous.
   --Chaucer. [1913 Webster]
   -- Tor"tu*ous*ly, adv. -- Tor"tu*ous*ness, n.

n. The property of being tortuous.

n. a tortuous and twisted shape or position; "they built a tree house in the tortuosities of its boughs"; "the acrobat performed incredible contortions" [syn: tortuosity, torsion, contortion, crookedness]