knotty

How to use knotty in a sentence. Example sentences and definitions for knotty.

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Editorial note

There are a lot of knotty problems to work out, but nothing insurmountable.

Examples12

Definitions4

Parts of speech1

Quick take

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"

Meaning at a glance

The clearest senses and uses of knotty gathered in one view.

adjective

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"

adjective

used of old persons or old trees; covered with knobs or knots; "gnarled and knotted hands"; "a knobbed stick"

adjective

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"

Definitions

Core meanings and parts of speech for knotty.

adjective

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"

adjective

used of old persons or old trees; covered with knobs or knots; "gnarled and knotted hands"; "a knobbed stick"

See also: gnarled, gnarly, knotted, knobbed

adjective

tangled in knots or snarls; "a mass of knotted string"; "snarled thread"

Example sentences

There are a lot of knotty problems to work out, but nothing insurmountable.

I also help untangle knotty workflow problems, you get the picture.

Vast lisp AI kraken and spermaceti entangle down in its knotty and murky abyss.

I still remember one exceptionally knotty piece of cherry that a guy who I was working with found for me.

Sometimes you run into a knotty problem that requires you to hold a lot of things in your head while you try to fit them together.

For its purpose, it is really an elegant solution to a knotty problem and therefore worthwhile.

If I'm splitting cedar, white pine, or poplar - yes, I will split with a splitting axe - and I'll go through it almost as fast as the demo, ex-knotty wood.

I feel particularly knotty about this news because I pitched Peter a magazine idea back in February '10.

But there are some areas of law where the principles are pretty clearly articulated but get knotty in their application and this is one of them.

Feature request: /shakespeare/:name/:from returns ':name, Thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch!

Because of this background, I'm able to make knotty, complex subjects easily understood using a variety of media, and enliven prosaic subjects with colorful analogies, custom visuals, and backstories.

Having deployed liveview for an admin dashboard, I gotta say, it really is great FUN, and no-fuss, even if you're slinging together a system that customers never see so you don't care if the code gets a bit knotty, and your datastructures are abjectly awful.

Frequently asked questions

Short answers drawn from the clearest meanings and examples for this word.

How do you use knotty in a sentence?

There are a lot of knotty problems to work out, but nothing insurmountable.

What does knotty mean?

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"