Involving extreme pain or suffering, either physically or emotionally; extremely unpleasant or difficult.
From 'torture' derived from Latin 'tortura' meaning twisting pain, from 'torquere' to twist. The '-ous' suffix means full of or characterized by.
There's a subtle grammar puzzle: 'torturous' means painful like torture, while 'tortuous' means twisted like a winding path—easy to mix up, but their roots show torture literally means twisting pain.
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