torturous

I have heard this word used recently in discussion of the administration of the lethal injection from which Christa Pike managed to recover. Her legal team had warned state officials that she had small veins and a platelet disorder that would make injecting her a difficult procedure, amounting to torture. It would be torturous. And indeed this was the case with officials making several attempts to find a vein and causing Pike extreme distress.

The use of torturous as in a torturous execution, a torturous procedure, with the meaning ‘involving or causing torture’ felt odd to me.  The Oxford English Dictionary tracks this use of torturous from 1496 to 1871.  From 1841 it records the figurative use of torturous applied mostly to writing or thinking, with the meaning ‘involving extreme distortion or manipulation’. His torturous argument.  Torturous prose.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that tortuous (Latin tortuosus full of twists and bends) is mistakenly used for torturous (involving torture). There is a very nice citation from 1890  in the OED that makes the distinction: ‘Tortuous, as well as torturous, renderings of the Psalms …’.

The first meaning of torturous may have died out in 1841 but it has obviously been lurking in the background and has been revived for the occasion.  The OED will have to update.