vacillates

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

It is closer to music than epic, a mesmerizing suite of songs that conveys Tennyson’s private sorrow as he vacillates from unbearable agony to precarious hope.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 20, 2026

Driven by a dark kineticism, it vacillates between contempt and gratitude at a velocity that catches my husband, my therapist, even me off-guard.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 3, 2024

He apparently vacillates between moments of sleeping with his mouth open in a sign of utter disinterest and being jolted to stare menacingly at witnesses, the judge and other people in the courtroom.

From Salon • Apr. 29, 2024

“He vacillates between being very intense and focused about his work and just really silly and fun,” Diarra Kilpatrick, who plays Paul’s wife, Clara, said in a video interview.

From New York Times • Mar. 2, 2023

Before the final accomplishment of any great voluntary change the mind vacillates, now soothing itself by fervent expectation, now recoiling from obstacles which seem never to have presented themselves before with so frightful an aspect.

From The Last Man by Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft