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Full of knots; knotted; having many knots; as, knotty timber; a knotty rope.

When they were accorded from the fray. Spenser. All which particulars, being confessedly knotty and difficult can never be accorded but by a competent stock of critical learning. South.

A word, phrase, idiom, or custom peculiar to Africa or Africans. "The knotty Africanisms . . . of the fathers." Milton.

To free from obscurity or ambiguity; to relive of perplexity; to make perspicuous. Many knotty points there are Which all discuss, but few can clear. Prior.

Knotty; difficult. [R.] Care being taken not to add any of the cramp reasons for this opinion. Coleridge.

To explain; to unfold. [Obs.] Like Solon's self explatest the knotty laws. B. Jonson.

Knotty; full of knots or gnarls; twisted; crossgrained. The unwedgeable and gnarléd oak. Shak.

Full of knots; knotty; twisted; crossgrained.

Having joints; articulated; full of nodes; knotty; as, a jointed doll; jointed structure. "The jointed herbage." J. Philips. -- Joint"ed*ly, adv.

Knotty; rough; figuratively, rough in temper. Fuller. -- Knag"gi*ness, n.

Knotty; gnarled. The knarred and crooked cedar knees. Longfellow.

Knotty; gnarled. Chaucer.

to knock the head against a post; to knock a lamp off the table. When heroes knock their knotty heads together. Rowe.

Entangled; puzzling; knotty. [R.] They're catched in knotted lawlike nets. Hudibras.

The quality or state of being knotty or full of knots.

Knotty; having numerous or conspicuous nodes.

The quality of being knotty or nodose; resemblance to a node or swelling; knottiness. Holland.

Nodose; knotty; knotted. [Obs.]

o confine with pegs; to restrict or limit closely. I will rend an oak And peg thee in his knotty entrails. Shak.

The sole of the foot. [R.] "Knotty legs and plants of clay." B. Jonson.