How to Use rectilinear in a Sentence

rectilinear

adjective
  • The eggnog ice cream was sold in a rectilinear form known as a brick.
    — Jacques Kelly, Baltimore Sun, 13 Dec. 2022
  • Then, balance it with some contrast by adding a few rectilinear pieces.
    — Tessa Cooper, Southern Living, 17 Sep. 2025
  • The blacksmith was a lean man with a sad, rectilinear face and hair the color of clapboard.
    — Elizabeth McCracken, Harpers Magazine, 5 Jan. 2021
  • Four thick, square bronze slabs, each pierced by a circular hole, are stacked atop a rectilinear base like a precarious house of cards.
    — Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times, 13 Aug. 2024
  • Most homes follow a fairly rectilinear design scheme, in which each room acts as a sort of jewel box, bound by right angles and straight lines.
    — Tori Latham, Robb Report, 6 Aug. 2025
  • On top of being one of the tallest and slimmest buildings in the world, the perfectly rectilinear tower would also be a stark, clean white.
    — Matthew Sedacca, Curbed, 20 Oct. 2025
  • Freud’s body, for instance, is conscribed by a rectilinear structure built around (or extending out of) a bed’s headboard.
    — Sophie Madeline Dess, The Atlantic, 25 Mar. 2021
  • Encased in a modern rectilinear form, this lantern head feels like an innovative spin on a timeless fixture.
    — Blake Bakkila, Architectural Digest, 29 Apr. 2025
  • Manhattan’s rectilinear street grid doesn’t lend itself easily to view cones.
    — Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, 25 Oct. 2023
  • And they were arranged along streets that meandered a bit but were fairly conventional in their rectilinear layout.
    — John Kelly, Washington Post, 12 Nov. 2022
  • The centerpiece of the room is its long, rectilinear table and four correlating benches.
    — Madeleine Luckel, Architectural Digest, 16 July 2024
  • Otherwise, rectilinear geometry unites the home and the step-down.
    — Kathryn O’Shea-Evans, WSJ, 9 Sep. 2022
  • The stable but slightly horizontal rectilinear shape hints at landscape while helping to focus the eye.
    — Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times, 9 Dec. 2024
  • After demolishing the rotting rectilinear carport at the front, the residence’s unique shape is now in full view on approach.
    — Elizabeth Fazzare, Architectural Digest, 17 Sep. 2024
  • Seemingly hauled up en masse, the forms are wired together and slapped onto a rectilinear steel support, like writhing refugees from a maritime disaster.
    — Julia Couzens, Sacramento Bee, 30 Jan. 2024
  • Seemingly hauled up en masse, the forms are wired together and slapped onto a rectilinear steel support, like writhing refugees from a maritime disaster.
    — Julia Couzens, sacbee, 6 Apr. 2018
  • The picture’s minimalism, its rectilinear purity, sets off the sumptuous curves of the sitter’s body, the curved back of the chair and the shawl draped over it.
    — Washington Post, 12 Oct. 2023
  • When the passenger elevator birthed the high-rise office building, the rectilinear matrix flowed up toward the clouds.
    — Justin Davidson, Curbed, 26 Apr. 2021
  • An apple-green glass guardrail on the balcony and three glass cubes used as outdoor lighting punctuate the rectilinear parameters with color.
    — Nancy Keates, WSJ, 11 July 2018
  • Its haul road—which runs from the De Long Mountains to the port—was the only rectilinear imposition across the vast landscape.
    — Emily Witt, The New Yorker, 21 Nov. 2022
  • Floor-to-ceiling windows that span the length of the rectilinear house are almost all north-facing, reducing direct sun exposure (and therefore heat) from the south.
    — Laurel Benedum, ELLE Decor, 21 Apr. 2020
  • From 10 paces away, the Z Proto's grille appears to be a large, rectilinear opening much like that of the outgoing model.
    — Steve Siler, Car and Driver, 3 Nov. 2020
  • Furniture and objects were typically made from readily available wood, with rectilinear forms, and finished only with oils or paint.
    — Diana Budds, Curbed, 21 June 2019
  • In contrast to the rectilinear blocks at Stonehenge, the Stenness megaliths are thin slabs with angled upper edges, like upside-down guillotine blades.
    — Alex Ross, New Yorker, 24 Nov. 2025
  • Sarah Crowner, known over the last decade for stitching together cutout shapes of plain or painted canvas to form rectilinear abstract paintings, is sticking to first principles.
    — Roberta Smith, Martha Schwendener and Will Heinrich, New York Times, 15 Mar. 2018
  • Their rectilinear structures tempted children and adults alike, whether to squish their bodies between elements of a wall progression, climb inside a channel piece, or crouch beneath a single stack.
    — Leslie Jamison, The Atlantic, 31 Aug. 2020
  • The floor is made with hard-wearing grey and blue linoleum, overlaid with triangular designs, creating a visual contrast with the warmly textured, rectilinear wooden structure.
    — Kimberley Mok, Treehugger, 13 Mar. 2023
  • Even more alarming, one particular rendering showed a white-and-beige, mostly rectilinear and glowy room that would be unobjectionable — even pretty nice — in a boutique hotel or law office.
    — Christopher Bonanos, Curbed, 9 Feb. 2021
  • It’s flanked by wiggly Mitzi sconces and rectilinear Knoll nightstands from a consignment shop in the Southern California desert.
    — Morgan Goldberg, Architectural Digest, 11 Sep. 2024
  • The solution was to build a small space station, the Gateway, in a higher orbit around the Moon—a near rectilinear halo orbit—that Orion could reach and depart from.
    — Ars Technica, 30 Sep. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'rectilinear.' 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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