vacillate

A towering outside hitter, he was known for his ability to vacillate between power and finesse.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 28, 2025

But Mr. Putin seemed to vacillate on his own support for Mr. Prigozhin.

From New York Times ● Jun. 24, 2023

His leadership skills were lackluster, he was not a charismatic or inspiring speaker, he tended to vacillate in decision-making and he struggled to retain the best staffers.

From Salon ● Jul. 24, 2022

We are a nation traumatized into forgetting, psyches so pulverized by mass death that we vacillate wildly between rage and numbness—waiting until the cycle begins again, so frequent it masquerades as normalcy.

From Slate ● May 25, 2022

I did not dwell on the situation at Fort Hare, but life has a way of forcing decisions on those who vacillate.

From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela

Once he settles on the sofa beside me, McKellen vacillates between performative storytelling and genuine reflection.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 8, 2026

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

When the conspiracy at the center of “The Chair Company” consumes the life of Ron Trosper, he vacillates between screaming fury and the type of validation that lights up his smile from the inside.

From Salon ● Oct. 13, 2025

The rhythmic language vacillates widely between insistent pulse and total freedom.

From New York Times ● Jun. 9, 2022

He vacillates and is weak,—in which weakness is the fault of the book, as he plays the part of hero.

From Autobiography of Anthony Trollope by Anthony Trollope

The president’s tone toward the court has vacillated since then.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 2026

Instead, I vacillated between forgetting all about cancer some days and feeling like death was imminent others, and it was hard to predict what would prompt either extreme.

From Slate ● May 6, 2026

His children, Kelly and Jack, vacillated between showering him with affection and berating him for not catering to their whims.

From Salon ● Jul. 24, 2025

I vacillated frenetically between oversize and undersize clothes, ambivalent about whether I wanted to draw attention or repel it.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 8, 2024

She and Bunny had a relationship the likes of which I had seldom seen except in couples married for twenty years or more, a relationship which vacillated between the touching and the annoying.

From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt

They pose the theory that the stock market is vacillating between thematic momentum and macro conditions.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 15, 2026

Oppenheimer modulates the lighting during the scenes from cool to warm and back again, underlining the vacillating feelings they can’t acknowledge outright.

From New York Times ● Dec. 5, 2024

Not surprisingly, being the center of such wildly vacillating public opinion took its toll.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 12, 2023

They're constantly in a state of vacillating between reality and the "What if?" and the sense of guilt, which keeps them in rumination.

From Salon ● Aug. 20, 2023

Aliya’s face is flustered, vacillating between concern and disbelief.

From "Saints and Misfits" by S.K. Ali