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Definition of "involute" [in•vo•lute]

  • Intricate; complex. (adjective)
  • Botany Having the margins rolled inward. (adjective)
  • Botany Having whorls that obscure the axis or other volutions, as the shell of a cowrie. (adjective)
  • To curl inward. (verb-intransitive)
  • To return to a normal or former condition. (verb-intransitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "involute" in a sentence
  • "Oh, and a nuanced take on bringing involute cunning to a ruthlessness contest."
  • "Without thinking, outréblack squirrels inhabit upper Michigan and petrify the involute world."
  • "You offer a variety points of view, acknowledge your own contradictions, resolve them, involute and qualify and complicate and undermine those resolutions, and end up with an ultimate determination so considered, nuanced, and precise, with so much allowance for exceptions, that the only possible response short of writing a parallel novella-length essay of my own (like I did last time) is to quibble."