While most suspensions and polymer structured materials are shear-thinning, some materials can also show shear-thickening behaviour where viscosity increases with increasing shear rate or shear stress.

This phenomenon is also often referred to as dilatancy, and although this refers to a specific mechanism for shear thickening the terms are often used interchangeably.

In most cases, shear thickening occurs over a decade of shear rates and there can be a region of shear thinning at low and high shear rates.