How to Use butterfly effect in a Sentence

butterfly effect

noun
  • So does this mean that the butterfly effect doesn’t exist at all?
    — Sophie Putka, Discover Magazine, 17 Aug. 2020
  • Or could a simple act of kindness have been the butterfly effect that kept him from killing nine people?
    — Kathryn Burak, BostonGlobe.com, 7 Aug. 2019
  • The butterfly effects of even a single make in those 23 misses could have been enormous.
    — Rob Mahoney, SI.com, 1 June 2018
  • Matt’s arrival on the set has a butterfly effect, creating ripples of chaos.
    — Keith Phipps, Vulture, 26 Mar. 2025
  • The game features a butterfly effect system in which players must make choices that may change the story.
    — Anthony D'alessandro, Deadline, 15 Oct. 2024
  • Can Barry get around the butterfly effect of his meddling long enough to make his family whole?
    — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune, 13 June 2023
  • For time travel without all the butterfly effect nonsense, take a drive to Bisbee.
    — Meredith G. White, The Arizona Republic, 22 June 2024
  • What would the butterfly effect be of wearing two different socks for a day, or brushing your teeth with the opposite hand?
    — Melissa Kirsch, New York Times, 22 Jan. 2021
  • The butterfly effect, there for all to see in every roadside murmuration.
    — New York Times, 11 Apr. 2022
  • Change one detail and, via the butterfly effect, all manner of subsequent ones also alter.
    — Darran Anderson, The Atlantic, 17 June 2018
  • Your acts of kindness can produce the butterfly effect as your kind behavior triggers more kindness throughout the world.
    — Womensmedia, Forbes, 13 Nov. 2021
  • The digital butterfly effect is just the concept applied to the digital world.
    — Bob McKay, Forbes, 27 Jan. 2023
  • There are so many levels to the butterfly effect of this pandemic—not just the sickness but the emotional and mental effects.
    — Liam Hess, Vogue, 13 Aug. 2021
  • But because the star is nonchaotic, there is no butterfly effect; paths that converge stay correlated.
    — Quanta Magazine, 10 Mar. 2015
  • According to the butterfly effect, a small flutter in one corner of the globe can profoundly impact the opposite side of the world.
    — Molly Matthews, Forbes, 4 Oct. 2024
  • Well, in chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the phenomenon where a small change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere.
    — Noelle Devoe, Seventeen, 9 Feb. 2018
  • These layers should blend naturally to create the famous butterfly effect.
    — Dulce Moncada, Glamour, 23 Dec. 2025
  • In a game where both teams would later add a field goal apiece and go into overtime, every point was necessary, the block becoming a butterfly effect for the rest of the night.
    — Andrew Greif, NBC news, 3 Oct. 2025
  • But surely the butterfly effect of Hillary and Bill’s breakup didn’t prevent the widening of these major rifts in society?
    — Laura Marsh, The New Republic, 19 May 2020
  • People may be familiar with the butterfly effect, the theory that a slight change can drastically affect the future.
    — Clayton Davis, Variety, 9 Nov. 2023
  • These were the accidents of history, the butterfly effect that ran through the three very different societies my pilgrimage had taken me to.
    — Aatish Taseer, New York Times, 9 Nov. 2023
  • Based on mock drafts, there are some clear points in the NFL draft that have significant butterfly effects on the rest of the first round, if not, the entire draft.
    — John W. Dean, MSNBC Newsweek, 5 Apr. 2025
  • Unlike a Hollywood script where the butterfly effect takes cascading events and neatly organizes them, real life is less precise and messy.
    — Rod Berger, Forbes, 4 May 2021
  • The question Ahamed was left with after his research is how Germany and France set off a butterfly effect in the 1870s.
    — Nick Lichtenberg, Fortune, 2 June 2026
  • In an odd occurrence of the butterfly effect, the bombing is the entire reason Balderrama pursued a career in law enforcement.
    — Los Angeles Times, 23 Feb. 2022
  • The trailer shows the butterfly effect in action as characters gets killed off by different monsters, only to come back to life and repeat the same events with slightly different outcomes each time.
    — Lauren Coates, Variety, 16 Jan. 2025
  • To enjoy the film, audiences will have to let go of ideas of causality, the butterfly effect, alternate timelines or any of that good stuff that causes complications in time-travel stories.
    — Michael Ordoña, Los Angeles Times, 14 Oct. 2021
  • In short, while the show and comics have had similarities and differences in the past, all these changes have created a butterfly effect that here in the finale, the show really cannot look remotely like the end of the comics.
    — Paul Tassi, Forbes, 9 Oct. 2022
  • Out of the complexity of the global sand trade has emerged something of a butterfly effect, in which an economic decision in one place can wreak social and environmental havoc on the other side of the world.
    — Eoin O'Carroll, The Christian Science Monitor, 14 Sep. 2017
  • Straub is not so much concerned with time travel mechanics, the butterfly effect, or killing baby Hitler (or whatever the 1990s equivalent of that moral test would be).
    — Barbara Vandenburgh, USA TODAY, 15 May 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'butterfly effect.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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