involute

Borrowed from Latin involutus.

involute (comparative more involute, superlative most involute)

1. (formal) Difficult to understand; complicated.
   • 1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy:

     These vulgar, pleasure-seeking people, so frank and clamorous, were too uninhibited for his shielded and involuted life.

2. (botany) Having the edges rolled with the adaxial side outward.
   • 1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page 7:

     Furthermore, the free anterior margin of the lobule is arched toward the lobe and is often involute […]

3. (biology, of shells) Having a complex pattern of coils.
4. (biology) Turned inward at the margin, like the exterior lip of the shells of species in genus Cypraea.
5. (biology) Rolled inward spirally.

involute (third-person singular simple present involutes, present participle involuting, simple past and past participle involuted)

1. To roll or curl inwards.

involute (plural involutes)

1. (geometry) A curve that cuts all tangents of another curve at right angles; traced by a point on a string that unwinds from a curved object.

• involution
• advolute
• convolute
• evolute
• revolute

• involute at OneLook Dictionary Search
• involute in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

involute

1. feminine plural of involuto

involūte

1. vocative masculine singular of involūtus

• involute in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• involute in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette