In this paper, the notion termed a ldquononstationary fuzzy setrdquo is introduced, and the concept of a perturbation function that is used for generating nonstationary fuzzy sets is presented. Definitions of the basic set operators (the union, the intersection, and the complement) for nonstationary fuzzy sets are given, together with proofs of selected properties of these operators. Two case studies were carried out in order to illustrate the use of nonstationary fuzzy sets in a nonstationary fuzzy inference, and to provide an initial insight into the relationships between nonstationary and interval type-2 fuzzy sets.