knotty
/ˈnɒti
/adjective (knottier, knottiest)
1Full of knots: panelling in knotty pine...
- B-I-N will seal porous surfaces, like new wood, and seal off knots and sappy streaks in knotty pine so they won't bleed through and ruin the paint job.
- The 31-room lodge sits right on Lake Superior and is all Scandinavian, with hand-hewn beams, massive stone fireplaces, and guest rooms of high-gloss knotty pine.
- These range from the pale silvery hue of maple to the warm gold, knotty style of pine, and from the classic mid-brown of oak to the rich darkness of walnut.
Synonyms
gnarled, knotted, knurled, nodular, knobbly, lumpy, bumpy, rugged, rough, coarse
rare nodulous, nodose
knotted, tangled, tangly, twisted, entangled, ravelled, snarled, matted
2Extremely difficult or complex: a knotty legal problem...
- Mr Dexter said: ‘Insurance is increasingly becoming a knotty problem.’
- He spent much time trying to tease out this knotty problem with Laing.
- The newspaper also dwells on the jury selection in the original federal trial, but it never once mentions the truly knotty constitutional issue involved - double jeopardy.
Synonyms
complex, complicated, involved, intricate, convoluted, Byzantine, tangled, tortuous;
difficult, hard, thorny, taxing, awkward, tricky, problematic, troublesome, perplexing, baffling, mystifying, obscure, unfathomable, unanswerable, insoluble, impenetrable
formal involute, involuted
Derivatives
knottily
knottiness
/ noun ...- This may seem like it has the knottiness and subterfuge of a good spy thriller, but it fails as a drama because every climax is a false climax.
- The difficulty and complexity of the play's plotting is matched by an unusual density and knottiness of syntax.