mercurial

City officials expressed fear that Trump, a mercurial leader prone to grudges, would retaliate against California and Los Angeles because of its Democratic leadership.

World leaders swiftly weighed in, ranging from enthusiastic congratulations to more somber and circumspect assurances of continuity in the relationship with Trump, whose mercurial first presidency upended many longstanding diplomatic norms.

In Taiwan, where many supported Trump in 2020 for his tough-on-China stance, some people have since grown wary of the former president’s mercurial approach to foreign policy.

Beijing’s “stringent yet mercurial responses” during the pandemic have heightened people’s insecurity about the future.

The mercurial forces that condition life for the creatures of the Earth’s surface — sunlight, winds, the seasons, the weather — have little reach into the deep-sea ecosystem.