circuitousness

In this 10th anniversary year of 9/11, with renewed danger south of the border, the legend of Pancho Villa is a testament to the mutability — and the circuitousness — of history.

Pancho Villa, once a terrorist, now celebrated in New Mexico 2011

In this 10th anniversary year of 9/11, with renewed danger south of the border, the legend of Pancho Villa is a testament to the mutability — and the circuitousness — of history.

Pancho Villa, once a terrorist, now celebrated in New Mexico 2011

Well, this is Paris, M-G-M – a fantasy world of charm and merriment, and of that fabled "Lubitsch touch," which implied charm, provocative circuitousness and gaiety, combined with a slightly bittersweet awareness that all happiness is transient – but isn't it swell while it lasts!

The Awful Truth Gives Michael Moore a New Channel, and Some New Targets 1999

He had to abandon all generalities and circuitousness, and come plump upon the royal sinner with his "Thou art the man."

The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus American Anti-Slavery Society

ANFRACTUOSITY (from Lat. _anfractuosus_, winding), twisting and turning, circuitousness; a word usually employed in the plural to denote winding channels such as occur in the depths of the sea, mountains, or the fissures (_sulci_) separating the convolutions of the brain, or, by analogy, in the mind.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 Various

He had to abandon all generalities and circuitousness, and come plump upon the royal sinner with his "Thou art the man."

The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 1 of 4 American Anti-Slavery Society

Robin Greenlaw and Peter Lindsay took a way that should lead them far aside from this port, and then with circuitousness home.

Foes Mary Johnston 1903

Indeed I have often wondered whether a woman, when she is in pursuit of any given end, can progress by other methods than an ant, which hath no power of circuitousness, and will climb over a tree with long labour and pain rather than skirt it, if it come in her way.

The Heart's Highway: A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century 1900

Indeed I have often wondered whether a woman, when she is in pursuit of any given end, can progress by other methods than an ant, which hath no power of circuitousness, and will climb over a tree with long labour and pain rather than skirt it, if it come in her way.

The Heart's Highway Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman 1891

He knew that by this route he would avoid meeting his companions; its difficulties and circuitousness would exercise his feverish limbs and give him time for reflection.

On the Frontier Bret Harte 1869