circuitous

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: cir=cu=i=tous

CIDE DICTIONARY

circuitous, a. [LL. circuitosus.].

 Going round in a circuit; roundabout; indirect; as, a circuitous road; a circuitous manner of accomplishing an end.

Syn. -- Tortuous; winding; sinuous; serpentine.

OXFORD DICTIONARY

circuitous, adj.
1 indirect (and usu. long).
2 going a long way round.

Derivative

circuitously adv. circuitousness n.

Etymology

med.L circuitosus f. circuitus CIRCUIT

THESAURUS

circuitous

O-shaped, aberrant, aberrative, ambagious, anfractuous, backhand, backhanded, circular, circumlocutional, circumlocutory, collateral, convolutional, deflectional, departing, desultory, deviant, deviating, deviative, deviatory, devious, digressive, discursive, divagational, divergent, errant, erratic, excursive, flexuose, flexuous, helical, indirect, involute, involuted, involutional, labyrinthine, left-handed, mazy, meandering, meandrous, oblique, orbital, out-of-the-way, periphrastic, planetary, rambling, rivose, rivulose, rotary, round, roundabout, roving, ruffled, serpentine, shifting, side, sidelong, sinister, sinistral, sinuate, sinuose, sinuous, snaky, spiral, stray, swerving, torsional, tortile, tortuous, turning, twisting, twisty, undirected, vagrant, veering, wandering, whorled, winding, wreathlike, wreathy, zigzag

ROGET THESAURUS

circuitous

Circuit

N circuit, roundabout way, digression, detour, circumbendibus, ambages, loop, winding, zigzag, circuitous, indirect, roundabout, zigzag, backhanded, by a side wind, by an indirect course, in a roundabout way, from pillar to post.

Deviation

N deviation, swerving, obliquation, warp, refraction, flection, flexion, sweep, deflection, deflexure, declination, diversion, digression, depart from, aberration, divergence, zigzag, detour, divagation, wandering, vagrancy, evagation, bypaths and crooked ways, byroad, sidling, knight's move at chess, deviating, aberrant, errant, excursive, discursive, devious, desultory, loose, rambling, stray, erratic, vagrant, undirected, circuitous, indirect, zigzag, crab-like, astray from, round about, wide of the mark, to the right about, all manner of ways, circuitously, obliquely, sideling, like the move of the knight on a chessboard.

Circuition

N circuition, circulation, turn, curvet, excursion, circumvention, circumnavigation, circumambulation, northwest passage, circuit, turning, wrench, evolution, coil, corkscrew, turning, circuitous, circumforaneous, circumfluent, round about.