Word.ws English Dictionary

tortive

tortive adjective: twisted; wreathed.

Adjective

tortive (comparative more tortive, superlative most tortive)

  1. Twisted; wreathed.
    • [K]nots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
      Infect the sound pine, and divert his grain
      Tortive and errant from his course of growth.c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...

Forms of tortive

comparativemore tortive
superlativemost tortive

Origin of tortive

From Latin torquere (“to twist”). Sometimes attributed to Shakespeare.

Questions about tortive

What does tortive mean?
Tortive means twisted; wreathed.
What part of speech is tortive?
Tortive is an adjective.

Words near tortive in the dictionary

  1. tortiously
  2. tortiousness
  3. tortipelvic
  4. tortipelvis
  5. tortitude
  6. tortive
  7. tortle
  8. tortles
  9. tortness
  10. Torto
  11. tortoise

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tortive (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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