nonlinear
adjective
non·lin·e·ar
ˌnän-ˈli-nē-ər 
: not linear
nonlinear thinking
a nonlinear narrative
… I was already interested in the nonlinear manner in which ideas and fashions travel through our culture …—
Lyall Watson
Lyall Watson
nonlinearly
adverb
Examples of nonlinear in a Sentence
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The comparatively uptight Pari (Mahshad Bahraminejad) mounts nonlinear plays that depict the intrusion of political anxiety on everyday Iranian spaces.
—David Ehrlich, IndieWire, 28 Jan. 2026
And that means accepting the reality that a player like Bolduc — of which there are several on this team — will have a nonlinear development curve.
—Arpon Basu, New York Times, 23 Jan. 2026
The film fuses blues music, gothic horror, nonlinear storytelling and themes of racial oppression into the story of identical twin brothers — Smoke and Stack — who return to their Mississippi hometown to bring music and culture to their local Black community.
—Martha Ross, Mercury News, 22 Jan. 2026
The new approach moves beyond linear models by using Gaussian process regression, a technique capable of mapping complex nonlinear relationships with limited data.
—Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 14 Jan. 2026
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David Ehrlich, IndieWire, 28 Jan. 2026
And that means accepting the reality that a player like Bolduc — of which there are several on this team — will have a nonlinear development curve.
—Arpon Basu, New York Times, 23 Jan. 2026
The film fuses blues music, gothic horror, nonlinear storytelling and themes of racial oppression into the story of identical twin brothers — Smoke and Stack — who return to their Mississippi hometown to bring music and culture to their local Black community.
—Martha Ross, Mercury News, 22 Jan. 2026
The new approach moves beyond linear models by using Gaussian process regression, a technique capable of mapping complex nonlinear relationships with limited data.
—Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 14 Jan. 2026
See All Example Sentences for nonlinear
Cite this Entry
“Nonlinear.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nonlinear. Accessed 5 Feb. 2026.
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