labyrinthine

Etymology

From labyrinth + -ine.

adj

1. Physically resembling a labyrinth; with the qualities of a maze.
   As our train to Paris dashed through the labyrynthine flyovers at Porchefontaine, barely a mile from Versailles, the 75 m.p.h. limit was already almost attained. 1961 November, H. G. Ellison, P. G. Barlow, “Journey through France: Part One”, in Trains Illustrated, volume 14, number 158, page 670
   In the pyloric canal, muscular ridges are more fixed than elsewhere and produce quite a labyrinthine surface. 1996, Venkataraman Srinivasan, André Dubois, “Non-Human Primates”, in Steen Lindkær Jensen, Hans Gregerson, Mohammad Hosein Shokouh-Amin, Frank G. Moody, editors, Essentials of Experimental Surgery: Gastroenterology, page 27/4
   Crane trotted along the labyrinthine corridors of deck 3, accompanied by a young marine with close-cropped blond hair. 2011, Lincoln Child, Deep Storm, section 29, page 185
2. (anatomy) Relating to the labyrinth of the inner ear.
3. (figurative) Convoluted, baffling, confusing, perplexing.
   Mamet, like one of his characters, invents a labyrinthine, convoluted spiel leading nowhere, and like a magician distracts us with his words while elaborately not producing a rabbit from his hat. 13 September 1996, Roger Ebert, “American Buffalo movie review (1996)”, in Roger Ebert
   Any attempt to answer that question would carry us into the labyrinthine corridors of Jefferson's famously elusive mind. 2000, Joseph Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, page 51
   By coupling "essence" with "name" within a series of contraposed pairs of names, Socrates indicates the point to which he thinks his labyrinthine argument has led so far in the Cratylus. 2005, Michael W. Riley, Plato's Cratylus: Argument, Form, and Structure, page 103
   Northrop Frye called the novel “a kind of ‘midrash’ on the book of Job,” one that reimagines the opaque nature of divine justice as a labyrinthine modern bureaucracy. 2021, Meghan O'Gieblyn, chapter 12, in God, Human, Animal, Machine[…]