vacillate

Newsom and the Legislature can vacillate until next spring to negotiate a bond package for the November ballot.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 27, 2023

The Oscars can often vacillate between insidery navel-gazing and a ho-hum march toward best picture, but occasionally an acceptance speech cuts through the noise with authenticity.

From New York Times ● Mar. 13, 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

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

From "Kwame Crashes the Underworld" by Craig Kofi Farmer

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

As the score vacillates between rhythmic, melodic passages and warped dissonance, they look at times like they’re trying to worm their way out of their bodies.

From New York Times ● Apr. 24, 2023

Panic-stricken, he vacillates, supplicating Our Lady to save him.

From Là-bas by Keene Wallace

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

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 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

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

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

Throwing in with the CRM never stopped her from vacillating back and forth between her identities: Jadis and Anne, Alexandria and the authoritarian military.

From Salon ● Mar. 25, 2024

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

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 12, 2023

A few days later, he was back in a funk, vacillating again; he didn’t want to act like he hadn’t made a terrible choice.

From "A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age" by Matt Richtel