anfractuous
May. 11th, 2015 07:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordanfractuous (an-FRAK-choo-uhs) - adj., full of twists and turns, sinuous, circuitous, convoluted.
Could be the simple coils of a meandering river or as complex as the plans of a political chessmaster. I'm especially fond of using it to describe Muley Twist Canyon in southeastern Utah. Adopted in 1619, either directly or via French anfractueux, from Late Latin anfractuōsus, from Latin anfrāctus, winding, from am-, abbreviated form of ambi- in the sense of around + frāctus, past participle of frangere, to break. Oddly, the (now much rarer) noun form anfractuosity arrived into English more than 20 years earlier.
---L.
Could be the simple coils of a meandering river or as complex as the plans of a political chessmaster. I'm especially fond of using it to describe Muley Twist Canyon in southeastern Utah. Adopted in 1619, either directly or via French anfractueux, from Late Latin anfractuōsus, from Latin anfrāctus, winding, from am-, abbreviated form of ambi- in the sense of around + frāctus, past participle of frangere, to break. Oddly, the (now much rarer) noun form anfractuosity arrived into English more than 20 years earlier.
---L.
