How to Use fractal in a Sentence

fractal

noun
  • The quantum fractal emerged in all its glory.
    — Lyndie Chiou, Quanta Magazine, 25 Aug. 2025
  • But by looking at fractals in art and trees, the researchers hoped to start a discussion.
    — Eva Amsen, Forbes, 28 Feb. 2025
  • Snowflakes are an example of this, but fractals can also form tree patterns.
    — Eva Amsen, Forbes, 28 Feb. 2025
  • The Mandelbrot set is more than a fractal, and not just in a metaphorical sense.
    — Quanta Magazine, 26 Jan. 2024
  • In fact, the lake's fractal outline gives it a shoreline more than 1,900 miles long.
    — Ken Jennings, Condé Nast Traveler, 27 Mar. 2017
  • Nearby, a Grecian bust is caught, mid-scream; a fractal seems to turn; the cat’s eyes appear to widen.
    — Washington Post, 24 Dec. 2019
  • The segment lost me when everything started getting echo-y and fractal.
    — Bethy Squires, Vulture, 20 Aug. 2021
  • Eyes a kaleidoscope of water fractals.
    — Literary Hub, 14 Apr. 2026
  • The news, like a fractal, repeats this betrayal of good intentions on every scale.
    — Greg Jackson, Harper's magazine, 6 Jan. 2020
  • There were ivory fractals of dead lichen, like intricate coral, and miniature hills and valleys of sphagnum moss in every shade.
    — Henry Wismayer, New York Times, 16 Nov. 2016
  • Long tiers of candles burned around the piano, light poured in a velvety haze from the ceiling, and fractals purled and oozed on a screen at the back of the stage.
    — Dan Piepenbring, The New Yorker, 2 Sep. 2019
  • The equations could predict an ice cube shape resembling a fractal, which has never been observed in nature.
    — Manon Bischoff, Scientific American, 23 Mar. 2023
  • Over the course of his career, his use of fractal patterns increased, and seeking out these spirals has even been used to root out fake paintings.
    — Erin Blakemore, Smithsonian, 2 Jan. 2017
  • There's also an infinity mirror and chain, fractal walk, baubles, bubbles and more.
    — Luann Gibbs, The Enquirer, 29 Dec. 2024
  • This rough, fragmented pattern, known as a fractal, creates an effective means of sampling a large space.
    — Carl Zimmer, Discover Magazine, 14 Sep. 2011
  • It must be stated fractals are not mirror images just eerily repeating patterns.
    — Clem Chambers, Forbes, 13 Nov. 2023
  • In this view, existence spreads out like a fractal drawing, and there are countless nooks in which pocket universes can reside.
    — Brian Resnick, Vox, 3 May 2018
  • But on Thursday the endless kaleidoscope fractals mostly felt like a busy albatross around the score’s neck.
    — Zachary Woolfe, New York Times, 17 Feb. 2023
  • Today, just 40 years after its discovery, the fractal has become a cliché, borderline kitsch.
    — Quanta Magazine, 26 Jan. 2024
  • The resulting images of the simulations show islands of dark or light for atoms with spin up or down, water or ice, the edges of their shapes jagged and fractal in nature.
    — Meredith Fore, WIRED, 5 July 2019
  • Other examples of nature’s fractals include clouds, rivers, coastlines and mountains.
    — Richard Taylor, Smithsonian, 31 Mar. 2017
  • Puente told me these antennas are all inspired by fractals, a type of design in which similar patterns repeat themselves at various sizes.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 14 Mar. 2017
  • The energy values began forming a visually striking pattern — a fractal, meaning that smaller parts of it looked the same as the whole.
    — Lyndie Chiou, Quanta Magazine, 25 Aug. 2025
  • The animal forages along a complex mathematical pattern called a Lévy flight, a type of fractal.
    — Stephen Ornes, Discover Magazine, 15 Dec. 2010
  • Enlightenment is a distant shore for me but these moments are undeniably fractals of a larger mosaic.
    — Elizabeth Greenwood, Longreads, 31 Jan. 2018
  • Is there a relationship that’s well understood between these kinds of hierarchical scalings and things like fractal sets?
    — Quanta Magazine, 3 July 2024
  • Stories spiral out of stories in Meloy’s fiction, like fractals endlessly elaborating to fill all the available space.
    — Laura Miller, Slate Magazine, 13 June 2017
  • Some researchers have been arguing that quark-gluon plasma has these two properties and that fractal theory could offer insights into how the plasma behaves.
    — Clara Moskowitz, Scientific American, 14 Feb. 2023
  • But over the spring, as the news cycle unfurled fresh hell by the minute like a fractal of horrors, I was forced to accept that every two or three functional days would be followed by a day of recovery.
    — Karla L. Miller, Washington Post, 13 Oct. 2020
  • One vendor uses fractal woodburning -- the art of burning figures into wood using high-voltage electricity -- to make serving trays, coasters and even coat hangers.
    — Bob Sandrick, cleveland, 17 July 2023

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

Last Updated: