Does sinuous mean something like full of sin"? I saw the word in The Devil in the White City."

The adjective sinuous has several meanings, all of which relate to curving or turning. From its sixteenth-century origin, the Latin sinus referred to a hollowed-out area, or a concave-surface recess.
 

You can have the graceful uncoiling kind of sinuous, as in Erik Larson's Devil in the White City: ". . . as an accompaniment to the sinuous emergence of a cobra from a basket."

There's the meandering sort of sinuous used in James Fenimore Cooper's The Deerslayer, " . . . as if he already distrusted the presence of an enemy on the opposite shore of the narrow and sinuous stream."

Mark Twain wrote of a winding path in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, when he described Tom and Becky's travels, " . . . then they wandered down a sinuous avenue holding their candles aloft and reading the tangled web-work of names, dates, post-office addresses."

Twists and turns of the truth can lead to sinuous statements, remarks that either lack directness or facts in their communication.

 
 
 
 
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