Labyrinthine

//ˌlab.əˈɹɪn.θʌɪn// adj

adj ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 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."

  2. 2
    Relating to the labyrinth of the inner ear.
  3. 3
    Convoluted, baffling, confusing, perplexing. figuratively

    "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."

Adjective
  1. 1
    highly complex or intricate and occasionally devious wordnet
  2. 2
    resembling a labyrinth in form or complexity wordnet
  3. 3
    relating to or affecting or originating in the inner ear wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
labyrinthianconvolutedaberrantaberrativeaffectedambagious

Example

More examples

"Tatoeba is starting to look like one of Borges' labyrinthine libraries."

Etymology

From labyrinth + -ine from Ancient Greek λᾰβύρῐνθος (lăbúrĭnthos, “a maze”).

Related phrases

labyrinthine artery

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.