Do we say torturous or tortuous

torturous 10 occurrences

A sort of dreary thankfulness blossomed feebly in her heart that the torturous day was over.

Even now it was a torturous twilight in the cave, even now she smelled wood-smoke; even now she was like one starting at the noises of the night....

What happened after that, though it lasted seven long and torturous years, is fairly familiar to the American people.

Torturous trek.

Dorothy Faust (W); 27Nov59; R246449. Torturous trek.

Dorothy Faust (W); 3Sep59, R241761. Torturous trek.

Torturous trek.

Dorothy Faust (W); 27Nov59; R246449. Torturous trek.

Dorothy Faust (W); 3Sep59, R241761. Torturous trek.

The first reaches of the inlet promised well, having a depth of from 1 1/2 to 3 fathoms, and a width of from two to three hundred yards; but it ultimately became much narrower, and so torturous that, after following its windings for twenty-seven miles, we had only advanced eight miles in a South 60 degrees East direction from the entrance.

tortuous 238 occurrences

I listened patiently to their diatribes concerning the perfidy of English Statesmen, and then pointed out, giving chapter and verse in German biographies, that Bismarck's record was exceedingly tortuous; the forgery of the Ems telegram was given as an instance.

Nightly the rubber-neck car swinging gayly with lanterns stops before the imitation joss house, the spurious opium joint and tortuous passage to the fake fan-tan and faro game, with a farewell call at Hong Joy Fah's Oriental restaurant and the well-stocked novelty store of Wing, Hen & Co.

The tortuous foldings of the external surface of the brain.

Having sauntered about for a few moments, and assured ourselves that this was really the place we were in search of, we went to the arch, walked six or seven yards forward, looked up a dark, tortuous, narrow passage on the right, and entered it.

He's a tortuous person.'

Note the throng incessantly threading those narrow and tortuous streets.

dishonest, dishonorable; unconscientious, unscrupulous; fraudulent &c 545; knavish; disgraceful &c (disreputable) 974; wicked &c 945. false-hearted, disingenuous; unfair, one-sided; double, double- hearted, double-tongued, double-faced; timeserving^, crooked, tortuous, insidious, Machiavelian, dark, slippery; fishy; perfidious, treacherous, perjured. infamous, arrant, foul, base, vile, ignominious, blackguard.

Ah, the vaults,the long, the tortuous, the darksome vaults,how had I forgotten them?

The entrance to this river is very narrow and tortuous.

After many entanglements in the ranges, and confusion arising from the tortuous courses of the rivers, the watershed was at last crossed, and on the 28th of October they camped once more on the Palmer, whence they safely returned along their outward course.

Thorns of a strange fishhook variety drove their barbed points into us, and each yard of the tortuous path that we cut through the devilish vines was marked by a scrap of our clothing, which the tormenting thorns seemed to wave aloft as an emblem of victory.

The darkness wreathed itself into mocking and tortuous bodies whose faces were hidden.

Just as the high-tide line round the continents of North and South America runs a long and tortuous course, but finally closes back on itself, so will every contour do likewise.

It flows at the bottom of a gully about fifteen feet deep, which traverses the broad valley in a most tortuous course.

When they came to the foot-hills and the rider dismounted and led the way, with a following muzzle at times poking the small of his back, up the tortuous path, rounding pinnacles and skimming the edge of abysses, his leg muscles answered with the readiness of familiarity with climbing.

Was it for this, that students at the bar, acute, inquisitive, sceptical (here only wild enthusiasts) neglected for a while the paths of preferment and the law as too narrow, tortuous, and unseemly to bear the pure and broad light of reason?

Believe me, this work, and the representation which grows out of it, can no longer be done if we attempt the handling of political machinerythe making of platforms, the judging of candidates, the measuring and disputation of party plans and issues, and all the tortuous following up of public and personal political history.

It is one in which we shall see unbounded trust met by treacherous deceit, in which we shall see countless benefactions rewarded by the basest ingratitude, and in which we shall witness the deliberate renunciation of a life of honourable effort in favour of the tortuous and precarious ways of the criminal.

Fire in every horrible form: pits of flame waving in the wind; liquid metal-flames writhing in tortuous streams through the sand; wide caldrons filled with boiling fire, over which bent ghastly wretches stirring the strange brewing; and through all, crowds of half-clad men, looking like revengeful ghosts in the red light, hurried, throwing masses of glittering fire.

What wizard hints across them fleet, These heirs of all the town's thick sin, Swift gypsies of the tortuous street, With childhood yet on cheek and chin!

The tortuous direction of the horn tubules, and the almost interlocking nature of the alternating strata of the intertubular material, together combine to give the frog its characteristic toughness and resiliency.

The river James lacks entirely those features that give grandeur to scenery; the river, it is true, by its tortuous windings, every now and then presents a broad sheet of water; the banks are also prettily wooded; but there is a great sameness, and a total absence of that mountain scenery so indispensable to grandeur.

But overhead the great branches fight upwards through a tortuous growth to the sky, and, as you advance, Thornby Place continues to puzzle you with its medley of curious and contradictory aspects.

Below me lay the white tortuous road leading downward to the shore in coils, and clothing the road, the many woods, all hoary white because the sharp sea-breeze had breathed on them.

The digestive apparatus consists of a long and tortuous tube called the alimentary canal, varying in length from twenty-five to thirty feet, along which are arranged the various digestive organs,the mouth, the stomach, the liver, and the pancreas,each of which, together with the intestines, has an important function to perform.

Do we say   torturous   or  tortuous