rectilinear

play

adjective rec·ti·lin·e·ar \ ˌrek-tə-ˈli-nē-ər \

Definition of rectilinear

1 :moving in or forming a straight line

rectilinear motion

2 :characterized by straight lines

the rectilinear skyline of a modern city

3 :perpendicular 3

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rectilinearity

play \-ˌli-nē-ˈa-rə-tē\ noun

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rectilinearly

adverb

See rectilinear defined for English-language learners

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Examples of rectilinear in a Sentence

the rectilinear skyline of a modern city

Recent Examples of rectilinear from the Web

The population began to creep out into nearby middle-class neighborhoods like Bayside, where the schools were better and the relatively spacious houses sat on quiet streets with tidy, uniformly rectilinear front lawns.

— jay caspian kang, New York Times, "What a Fraternity Hazing Death Revealed About the Painful Search for an Asian-American Identity," 9 Aug. 2017
There are signs of Hans Hofmann’s push-pull forms and rectilinear compositions reminiscent of Myron Stout and Burgoyne Diller.

— roberta smith, martha schwendener, jason farago and will heinrich, New York Times, "What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week," 25 May 2017
Those angled houses --along Bayou Road, for example -- were built on parcels aligned with old French long-lot plantations, which were later superimposed by a rectilinear urban grid.

— richard campanella, NOLA.com, "New Orleans 'Fort-prints': Odd angled properties are relics of city's fortified past," 10 May 2017
F.P. had formed almost perfectly rectilinear letters—with one exception.

— michael cannell, Smithsonian, "Unmasking the Mad Bomber," 2 May 2017
The wooden sculpture, glossy with apple-green paint, rests on the floor like a Brobdingnagian jigsaw puzzle, fragmented into thirteen rectilinear sections—a jazzy riff on the modernist grid.

— The New Yorker, "Jeremy Moon," 31 Mar. 2017
Trump, unlike his predecessor, unlike any American who had run for the White House or held any office anywhere, admired Putin—the strong hand of the state imposing an almost rectilinear order on the chaos of the natural world.

— peter savodnik, The Hive, "Why Even Russia Is Turning on Trump," 7 Mar. 2017
When rating photos in a circle-themed mission, the buttons are circular, while the square mission has a rectilinear motif.

— joseph flaherty, WIRED, "A Photo App That Teaches You to Be More Perceptive," 13 Aug. 2014

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'rectilinear.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.