unilinear

[yoo-nuh-lin-ee-er]

adjective

1. developing or evolving in a steady, consistent, and undeviating way.

Word History and Origins

Origin of unilinear¹

First recorded in 1925–30; uni- + linear

Example Sentences

“The social evolutionary story of humans on Earth is not a simple, unilinear upward trajectory,” she told me recently.

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The new English mass is unilinear, lacking density; there is little opportunity for private prayer.

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Thus, the discoveries seemed to uphold the notion of human evolution as a unilinear “march of progress” from a knuckle-walking chimplike ape to our striding, upright form—a schema that has dominated paleoanthropology for the past century.

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“These two distinct technologies were parallel developments, not the product of a unilinear technological evolution,” the research team, led by Dennis L. Jenkins of the University of Oregon, concluded in the report.

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Christ's experience is conceived as unilinear.

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