vacillate

The studio spectators cut him off with a loud, extended chorus of boos, as Colbert appeared to vacillate between laughing and choking up.

From Slate ● Jul. 18, 2025

You have to see it so many times because you have to vacillate between watching the show and watching the audience.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 13, 2024

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

The Obayifo’s shifty eyes vacillate between me and Ama.

From "Kwame Crashes the Underworld" by Craig Kofi Farmer

But Bruni easily could have been talking about Sacred Heart Hospital, whose staff vacillates between bridging the compassion gap between medical professionals and patients and managing our expectations.

From Salon ● Feb. 26, 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

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

She vacillates between optimism and despair over Iran’s future.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 24, 2023

For the hero of Promethidenlos vacillates between poetry and sculpture, but is able to give himself freely to neither art because of his overwhelming sense of social injustice and human suffering.

From The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann Volume I by Gerhart Hauptmann

In the 2000s, the company vacillated between a fashion-forward and a basics-focused approach—neither of which helped sales much.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 23, 2026

“He was begging to be able to do something on the offensive side,” Skipper said of the redshirt junior, who has vacillated between the offensive and defensive lines during his seven seasons with the team.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 13, 2025

Her parents vacillated between wanting to take a hard line and accommodating Olivia’s apparent limitations for the sake of ease.

From Slate ● Jan. 4, 2025

My emotions vacillated from fury to giddiness to crushing depression on an hourly basis.

From Salon ● Nov. 5, 2023

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

The arrival of the Iamaleava brothers prompted quarterbacks Joey Aguilar and Robert McDaniel to enter the transfer portal, with Demaricus Davis vacillating on his future, according to Foster.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 27, 2025

Whereas “The Homecoming” was noted for its claustrophobic machismo, here it’s the women who dominate the proceedings, vacillating between sisterly tenderness and bitter recriminations.

From New York Times ● Feb. 9, 2024

With Navarro, Foster transforms Danvers into someone more brittle but not lacking in heart, a cornered creature vacillating between allying herself with what’s facing her or turning on it.

From Salon ● Jan. 14, 2024

Jam could see a whole river of things in his face, currents shifting and swelling, vacillating from grief to fury.

From "Pet" by Akwaeke Emezi