Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Rolled or coiled together in overlapping whorls, as certain leaves, petals, or shells.
- intransitive & transitive verb To coil or fold or cause to coil or fold in overlapping whorls.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Rolled together, or one part over another.
- noun That which is convoluted.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective (Bot.) Rolled or wound together, one part upon another; -- said of the leaves of plants in æstivation.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb transitive To make unnecessarily
complex . - verb transitive To
fold orcoil into numerous overlapping layers. - adjective botany, of a leaf
coiled such that one edge is inside, and one outside the coil, giving a spiral effect in cross section. (A special case ofimbricate )
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb practice sophistry; change the meaning of or be vague about in order to mislead or deceive
- verb curl, wind, or twist together
- adjective rolled longitudinally upon itself
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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A more practical solution, however, turned out to be something called a convolute
The Seattle Times 2010
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A few times the story pirouettes on its tail to further convolute the proceedings, but a happy reader will lap up every progressive revelation with a grin of joy.
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Ironically, I think this choice illustrates the ‘appalling’ inconvenient truth that politics itself, not merit, does indeed often determine who wins in real, if not American movie, life; that ulterior motives and surface features can and do, at the same time, in contradictory sorts of ways, convolute to bequeath value, and trump substance.
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You can divert, rationalize, convolute, and obscure the minor details to your heart's content but one irrefutable fact remains: Cheney misinterpreted the powers of his office and directed officials of the CIA to illegally withhold crucial operational information from Congress.
CIA claims disputed program was 'never fully operational' 2009
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Ironically, I think this choice illustrates the ‘appalling’ inconvenient truth that politics itself, not merit, does indeed often determine who wins in real, if not American movie, life; that ulterior motives and surface features can and do, at the same time, in contradictory sorts of ways, convolute to bequeath value, and trump substance.
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Fans who do want to see Jason in graduate school or Maggie in the office can turn to fan fiction instead of pressuring the creators to convolute the sources.
How to Make Superhero Comics Interesting Again » Comics Worth Reading 2010
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I mean completely authentic Mark III H-1s with single axis rolling convolute waist joints, and vintage Skylab A7Ls with micrometeoroid cover layers.
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I never play a song the same way twice, and my music doesn ' t disguise the melody or reshape it or convolute it so that it ' s unrecognizable.
Protector of the Soulful Melody Nat Hentoff 2010
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The support cast is a bit more steroetyped than usual (I expected Peter Lorre to appear at any moment), but no one will care as the audience obtains a deep look at 1940s Londoners sacrificing for the war cause while the two cops work a case in which every clue they uncover seems to complicate and convolute the investigation.
No Human Enemy-John Gardner « The Merry Genre Go Round Reviews 2008
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I mean completely authentic Mark III H-1s with single axis rolling convolute waist joints, and vintage Skylab A7Ls with micrometeoroid cover layers.
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