knotty

Etymology

From Middle English knotti, knotty (“having a knot in it; full of knots; tied together (?); resembling a knot, knotlike; having knobs or protuberances; bulging, convex; of a tree, branch, etc.: full of knots, gnarled; of a plant cutting to be grafted or planted: full of buds or eyes; having joints (?); having swollen joints; of flesh: glandular; of flesh: granular, lumpy, especially, having many swellings; mangy, scurfy (?); having pimples (?); of cauterization: carried out on glandular tissue; (figuratively) of a question or problem: difficult, intricate”) [and other forms], from knotte (“knot; pattern of intersecting lines; coil of a snake”) (from Old English cnotta (“knot”), from Proto-Germanic *knuttô (“knot”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *gnod- (“to bind”)) + -i (suffix forming adjectives from nouns). The English word may be analysed as knot + -y (suffix forming adjectives with the sense ‘having the quality of’). cognates * Dutch knoestig (“knotty”) * German knotig (“knotty”) * Swedish knotig, knutig (“knotty”)

adj

1. Of string or something stringlike: full of, or tied up, in knots.
2. Of a part of the body, a tree, etc.: full of knots (knobs or swellings); gnarled, knobbly.
   a knotty pine
3. (figurative)
   1. Complicated or tricky; complex, difficult.
      a knotty problem
      It’s the knottier questions that elicit his cleaving judgments. 2016-10-03, Tad Friend, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny”, in The New Yorker
   2. Of an austere or hard nature; rugged.