Dictionary

tortious en · ADJ · etymology 1

Inherited from Middle English torcious, from Anglo-Norman torcious. By surface analysis, tort + -ious.

(obsolete) Wrongful; harmful.
- he found great store of hoorded threasure, / The which that tyrant gathered had by wrong / And tortious powre […] 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of torts.

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wrongful (wrongful)

(alt-of, misspelling) Misspelling of tortuous
alt of tortuous
- 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’. 2002, John David McClean, International Co-operation in Civil and Criminal Matters, page 140:
- 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. 2023, Jo Carby-Hall, “Sexual Harassment in the Britsh Workplace”, in Jo Carby-Hall, Aneta Tyc, Zbigniew Góral, editors, International Workplace Discrimination Law, page 232:
- 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. 1900, Thomas E. Wilson, Thomas Jefferson, Small, Maynard & Company, page 131:

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most tortious	Degree=Sup		lexicographic
more tortious	Degree=Cmp		lexicographic