tortious

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈtɔːʃəs/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈtɔɹʃəs/

Inherited from Middle English torcious, from Anglo-Norman torcious.

tortious (comparative more tortious, superlative most tortious)

1. (obsolete) Wrongful; harmful.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     he found great store of hoorded threasure, / The which that tyrant gathered had by wrong / And tortious powre […]

2. (law) Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of torts.

• (wrongful): wrongful

• tortious interference
• tortiously
• tortiousness

• tort

tortious (comparative more tortious, superlative most tortious)

1. Misspelling of tortuous
   • 1900, Thomas E. Wilson, Thomas Jefferson‎^[1], Small, Maynard & Company, page 131:

     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.

   • 2002, John David McClean, International Co-operation in Civil and Criminal Matters‎^[2], page 140:

     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’.

   • 2023, Jo Carby-Hall, “Sexual Harassment in the Britsh Workplace”, in Jo Carby-Hall, Aneta Tyc, Zbigniew Góral, editors, International Workplace Discrimination Law‎^[3], page 232:

     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.