knotty
Americanadjective
-
a knotty piece of wood.
-
involved, intricate, or difficult.
a knotty problem.
- Synonyms:
- complicated, complex
adjective
-
(of wood, rope, etc) full of or characterized by knots
-
extremely difficult or intricate
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of knotty
First recorded in 1200–50, knotty is from the Middle English word cnotti. See knot 1, -y 1
Explanation
Whether it’s pine or problems, sometimes the word knotty can apply to both. Knotty can describe something that has a lot of knots, either literally or figuratively. The adjective knotty is a way to describe something that’s covered in knots. It can be used in a literal sense to refer to wood that is covered in hard, irregular knots — you’ve probably seen these circular, knobby imperfections that sometime appear on wood. The word can also be used figuratively to describe something that is intricate and difficult to solve, such as a knotty political problem involving two warring nations or a knotty legal issue involving complicated constitutional issues.
Vocabulary lists containing knotty
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The BFG
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"Deep Survival" by Laurence Gonzales
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Jenée Desmond-Harris offers advice on untangling this knotty disagreement.
From Slate ● Jul. 21, 2026
But for those with an ear for knotty structures that sometimes feel like puzzle pieces, taking in the whole of the record is rewarding, even fun.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 14, 2026
As a portrait of an artist at a crossroads, it's compellingly knotty.
From BBC ● Mar. 4, 2026
What Thompson-Hernández’s art so easily dispels, no matter the genre it finds a home in, are all the knotty, misguided and trite representations of otherness in our contemporary world.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 27, 2026
Xan folded her knotty hands together and pressed them to her mouth.
From "The Girl Who Drank the Moon" by Kelly Barnhill
Engineers say Copilot saves them hundreds of hours a month by handling tedious and repetitive tasks, affording them time to focus on knottier challenges.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 22, 2024
The band’s set mixed crisp Vampire Weekend oldies and a few knottier new tunes from its just-released fifth album, “Only God Was Above Us.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 15, 2024
Later the Picasso inheritance grew knottier, with feminist historians and scholars of African and Oceanic art revealing the oversights and injuries of his omnivorous visual appetite.
From New York Times ● Apr. 6, 2023
And this is the knottier grimness beneath the ever-present dread written into the 1996 mystery asking how these young women fell from collaboration, real girl power, to devouring each other.
From Salon ● Jan. 16, 2022
But knottier points we knew not half so well, Deprived us soon of our paternal cell; And certain laws, by sufferers thought unjust.
From The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1 by Gilfillan, George
This massive achievement solves one of the knottiest problems in biology, and it won the AI’s creators a $3-million Breakthrough Prize.
From Scientific American ● Dec. 15, 2022
Gordon’s characters tend to be tough on themselves, convinced that diligent thinking and rethinking can untangle the knottiest problems.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 2, 2020
The morning’s knottiest exhortation came from Ma Catalina Vázquez Pérez, 51, who had woken at 5am hoping Amlo could get her son and her son-in-law out of jail.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 20, 2018
Certainly, his predecessors at the State Department have all wished for more time, space and secrecy to work through some of the world’s knottiest problems.
From New York Times ● Mar. 19, 2017
“As Agatha Swanburne once remarked, ‘Patience can untangle the knottiest shoelace, but so can a pair of scissors,’” she announced.
From "The Unseen Guest" by Maryrose Wood
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
