| a. | 1. | Full of knots; knotted; having many knots; |
| 2. | Hard; rugged; | |
| 3. | Difficult; intricate; perplexed. |
| Adj. | 1. | knotty - making great mental demands; hard to comprehend or solve; "a baffling problem"; "I faced the knotty problem of what to have for breakfast"; "a problematic situation at home" |
| 2. | knotty - used of old persons or old trees; covered with knobs or knots; "gnarled and knotted hands"; "a knobbed stick" | |
| 3. | knotty - highly involved or intricate; "the Byzantine tax structure"; "convoluted legal language"; "convoluted reasoning"; "intricate needlework"; "an intricate labyrinth of refined phraseology"; "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" |