"tortuous" in the adjective sense
1. Byzantine, convoluted, involved, knotty, tangled, tortuous
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"- Sir Walter Scott
"tortuous legal procedures"
"tortuous negotiations lasting for months"
2. tortuous, twisting, twisty, winding, voluminous
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"
3. tortuous
not straightforward
"his tortuous reasoning"
Source: WordNet® (An amazing lexical database of English)
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