tortious
/ˈtɔɹʃəs/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.08 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of torts.
adj
Example Sentences
- "he found great store of hoorded threasure, / The which that tyrant gathered had by wrong / And tortious powre […]"
- "Burr continued to preside over the Senate with matchless grace and dignity, addressed it finally in the farewell speech which moved his enemies to tears, and wandered off into the tortious windings of political intrigue."
- "The very existence of article 23 was regarded as indicating that the Convention was not mandatory, on the rather tortious argument that if the Convention had been intended to replace the broad discovery powers previously exercised by the United States, acceptance of article 23 (which enables other states to refuse to operate the Convention in this area) ‘would have been most anomalous’."
- "Such argument is a weak one and suggests that future legislation may never cover those individuals or groups given the fact that legislation is a lengthy and tortious process."
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English torcious, from Anglo-Norman torcious. By surface analysis, tort + -ious.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *terkʷ-, torcious
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈtɔɹʃəs/
- British English: /ˈtɔːʃəs/
Usage
Inflected Forms
more tortious (comparative)
most tortious (superlative)