Meaning & use
Knotty
Last updated
Full of knots, or, of a problem, difficult and complicated to resolve.
See it in a sentence
The carpenter chose a plank of knotty pine for its rustic look.
They spent hours debating the knotty legal question of jurisdiction.
A note on using this word
The figurative sense, as in 'a knotty problem,' extends the literal image of tangled wood to any issue that resists easy resolution.
Words with a similar meaning
tangledcomplex
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Words with an opposite meaning
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