Adjacent Words

Knotty definitions

	Tweet

Webster's 1828 Dictionary

KNOT'TY, a. not'ty. Full of knots; having many knots; as knotty timber.
1. Hard; rugged; as a knotty head.
2. Difficult; intricate; perplexed; as a knotty question or point.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: making great mental demands; hard to comprehend or solve or believe; "a baffling problem"; "I faced the knotty problem of what to have for breakfast"; "a problematic situation at home" [syn: baffling, elusive, knotty, problematic, problematical, tough]
2: used of old persons or old trees; covered with knobs or knots; "gnarled and knotted hands"; "a knobbed stick" [syn: gnarled, gnarly, knotted, knotty, knobbed]
3: 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" [syn: Byzantine, convoluted, involved, knotty, tangled, tortuous]
4: tangled in knots or snarls; "a mass of knotted string"; "snarled thread" [syn: knotty, snarled, snarly]

Merriam Webster's

adjective (knottier; -est) Date: 13th century marked by or full of knots; especially so full of difficulties and complications as to be likely to defy solution <a knotty problem> Synonyms: see complex • knottiness noun

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. (knottier, knottiest) 1 full of knots. 2 hard to explain; puzzling (a knotty problem). Derivatives: knottily adv. knottiness n.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Knotty Knot"ty, a. [Compar. Knottier; superl. Knottiest.] 1. Full of knots; knotted; having many knots; as, knotty timber; a knotty rope. 2. Hard; rugged; as, a knotty head.[R.] --Rewe. 3. Difficult; intricate; perplexed. A knotty point to which we now proceed --Pope.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(knottier, knottiest) 1. A knotty problem is complicated and difficult to solve. The new management team faces some knotty problems. = thorny ADJ: usu ADJ n 2. Knotty wood has a lot of small hard areas on it where branches once grew. ADJ: usu ADJ n

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. 1. Knotted, gnarled, full of knots, knaggy, knurly. 2. Intricate, difficult, perplexing, embarrassing, hard, troublesome, involved.

Moby Thesaurus

Byzantine, Herculean, abstruse, arduous, beyond one, brutal, burled, complex, complicated, crabbed, cramp, critical, daedal, delicate, demanding, difficile, difficult, effortful, elaborate, exacting, formidable, garbled, gnarled, gnarly, gordian, hairy, hard, hard to understand, hard-earned, hard-fought, intricate, involved, jawbreaking, jumbled, knobbed, knobbly, knobby, knoblike, knotted, knurled, knurly, laborious, labyrinthine, lumpy, mean, no picnic, nodal, noded, nodiform, nodose, nodular, nodulated, noduled, not easy, nubbled, nubbly, nubby, obfuscated, obscure, obscured, operose, overtechnical, perplexed, rigorous, rough, rugged, scrambled, set with thorns, severe, sophisticated, spiny, steep, sticky, strenuous, studded, terrible, thorny, ticklish, toilsome, torose, tough, tricky, tubercular, tuberculous, tuberose, tuberous, uphill, wicked