Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Bending or winding alternately from side to side; sinuous.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Winding; bending about; having turns or windings.
- Wavering; not steady; variable.
- In botany, curved or bent alternately in opposite directions, as a stem or branch. Also flexuose.
- In zoology, almost zigzag, but with rounded angles; between undulated and zigzag: as, a flexuous margin.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Having turns, windings, or flexures.
- adj. (Bot.) Having alternate curvatures in opposite directions; bent in a zigzag manner.
- adj. Wavering; not steady; flickering.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. having turns or windings
Etymologies
- From Latin flexuosus, from flexus ("bend"), from flectere ("bend"). (Wiktionary)
- From Latin flexuōsus, from flexus, a bending, a turning, from past participle of flectere, to bend. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“But man himself cannot express love and humility by external signs, so plainly as does a dog, when with drooping ears, hanging lips, flexuous body, and wagging tail, he meets his beloved master.”
“Elsewhere it looked flexuous, here it looked vermiculated and lumpy, and her marine experiences suggested to her in a moment that two currents met and caused a turmoil at this place.”
“What a kitten-like, flexuous, tender creature she was!”
“For physic carrieth men in narrow and restrained ways, subject to many accidents and impediments, imitating the ordinary flexuous courses of nature.”
“Bo had a flexuous and finely-drawn figure not unreminiscent of many a vanished knight and dame, her remote progenitors, whose dust now mouldered in many churchyards.”
“-- Stem about 8 in. wide and long; globose, bearing fourteen to sixteen ridges, the edges of which are wavy or undulated, the prominent points crowned with tufts of thin, flexuous, yellow spines, the longest 1½ in., and hooked, the shorter ¾ in., and straight.”
“Branches numerous, flexuous, with small branchlets or joints springing from the ends in clusters, smooth, round, the thickness of whipcord, leafless, with numerous brown, dot-like marks scattered over the surface; under a lens these dots are seen to be tufts of very fine hairs.”
“_Spikes_ are from 1/2 to 2 inches; _rachis_ is slender, flexuous, flattened, scaberulous, with a few long hairs scattered singly along the margins or without these hairs.”
“The _inflorescence_ is a raceme of spikes, varying from 1-1/2 to 3-1/2 inches, with the spikes mostly densely arranged, though occasionally distant and not close-set, on a long; slender, puberulous or scaberulous peduncle; _rachis_ is flexuous, flattened, grooved and scaberulous.”
“Spikes or branches are slender, alternate, 1 to 2-1/2 inches, becoming shorter upwards, thickened and puberulous at the base, and the secondary rachis is flexuous, grooved, angular, and obscurely pubescent.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘flexuous’.
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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A Galimafrée of Plant Anatomy & Morph...
A hodgepodge, jumble, jambalaya, *gallimaufry, circus and tent revival of plant anatomy and morphology terms and phrases - its a big tent, and no tickets are required.
*array, collecti...naked bud, leaf blade, brochidodromous, serrate, cork cambium, rhizomatous, flower stalk, deciduous sepal, petal, whorl, nectar gland, stamen and 1348 more...
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logos's list
A poor pathetic thing, but mine own.
invidious, lugubriousness, vilify, noisome, synastry, front and center, declension, conjugation, regnal, diphthong, circumlocution, bishopric and 141 more...
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Winding or Meandering
Adjectives meaning winding or meandering
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Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Words I wrote down while reading this book
heptarchy, kibe, antiquary, wold, mendacious, vamp, vale, miry, calcareous, cerealia, ostleress, desultory and 105 more...
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Turning and Twisting Tours
words in the nature of double spirals
swift, swerve, swirl, swivel, swarm, swag, swank, swoop, swinge, swarf, spire, esparto and 361 more...
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word set8
dolmen, cairn, penetralia, dovetailed, draftsmanship, gestalt, dingbat, tenebrosity, squash racquets, dogleg, prurience, deflowering and 68 more...
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SAT Words
SAT Words
quaff, interdigitate, commiserate, ecclectic, evanescent, repudiate, impetuous, prosaic, polemical, belie, deferential, equanimity and 70 more...
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Forma
the shapes of things
flabelliform, funicular, filiform, contour, flexuous, epigenetics, circumferential, discoid, baculiform, alary, cordate, falciform and 2 more...
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rduke's Words
misguggle, ken, sere, etiolated, gelid, digladiate, popinjay, bathykolpian, conglaciation, hyperborean, callipygian, vagile and 1253 more...
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Wonders of the word
optic to coptic
alphabit, betamaximum, glammar, iota jot set, deltidium, kappale, chicane, chide, inusitate, pazend, abjad, Pinyin and 20 more...
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Words for a Twisted Mind
tortuous, meandrous, anfractuous, labyrinthine, sinuous, convoluted, helicoid, flexuous, cochlear, circuitous, serpentine, mazy and 2 more...
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Caxton's List
General Flotsam
drisheen, diamine, ellingtonian, hoodoo, a little happy, hobbledehoy, cambric, kenspeckle, feral, btwers, slipstream, fletching and 5 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for flexuous.
caxton flexuous adj, 1: having curves, turns, or windings. 2: lithe, or fluid in action or movement Jan 7, 2008