Definition of "tortuosity"

So far from seeking to "pettifogulise"—i.e., to find evasions for any purpose in a trickster's minute tortuosities of construction—exactly in the opposite direction, from mere excess of sincerity, most unwillingly I found, in almost everybody's words, an unintentional opening left for double interpretations.

1853, Thomas De Quincey, “Introduction to the World of Strife”, in Autobiographic Sketches (De Quincey’s Works; I), London: James Hogg & Sons, page 59