knotty

From Middle English knotty, knotti, equivalent to knot +‎ -y.

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• Homophone: naughty (in accents with the cot-caught merger)

• Rhymes: -ɒti

knotty (comparative knottier or more knotty, superlative knottiest or most knotty)

1. Full of knots.

   knotty pine

   • 1610-11, William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I Scene 2

     If thou murmur'st, I will rend an oak

     And peg thee in his knotty entrails till

     Thou hast howl'd away twelve winters.

2. Complicated or tricky; complex; difficult.

   a knotty problem

• knotti, cnotti

From knotte +‎ -y.

• IPA^(key): /ˈknɔtiː/

knotty

1. knotted, tied, linked
2. knotty, tangled, twisted
3. knobby, bumpy, clumped
4. knoblike, protruding

• English: knotty
• Scots: knottie

• “knottī (adj.)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-04-23.