Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Bending or winding alternately from side to side; sinuous.
from The Century Dictionary.
- 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.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Having turns, windings, or flexures.
- adjective (Bot.) Having alternate curvatures in opposite directions; bent in a zigzag manner.
- adjective Wavering; not steady; flickering.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective
winding from side to side;sinuous
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective having turns or windings
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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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.
INSIDE OF A DOG ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ 2009
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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.
INSIDE OF A DOG ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ 2009
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What a kitten-like, flexuous, tender creature she was!
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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.
A Changed Man 2006
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For physic carrieth men in narrow and restrained ways, subject to many accidents and impediments, imitating the ordinary flexuous courses of nature.
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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.
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_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.
A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses K. Rangachari
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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.
A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses K. Rangachari
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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.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 Various
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-- 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.
caxton commented on the word flexuous
flexuous adj, 1: having curves, turns, or windings. 2: lithe, or fluid in action or movement
January 8, 2008