Definition of "unilinear" [unilinear]

• Of or developing in a progressive sequence usually from the primitive to the advanced. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "No serious anthropologist takes that unilinear view any more: there's been a lot of water under the bridge since Lewis Henry Morgan."
• "But they have not been “passive subjects in a unilinear history of decline.”"
• "Its narrative web is undercut by chronological and scenic disruptions and juxtapositions that deliberately frustrate any attempt to fix a unilinear sequence of events, a rigid structure that encloses the story like a frame around a landscape painting."