vacillate

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

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 28, 2025

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 vacillate wildly between stunned incredulity and reverent awe at what the showrunners have done here.

From The Verge ● May 12, 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

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

When he isn’t mugging for Reed’s camera he vacillates between a stony-faced refusal to admit guilt and an approximation of remorse.

From Salon ● Mar. 26, 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

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

And yet, at a 2017 meeting with Xi, Trump vacillated, telling the Chinese leader he could “deal with” the Taiwan issue in “a matter of months,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 10, 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

Both sides have vacillated between tough talk and de-escalation in recent days, but the rhetoric took a harder turn on Tuesday.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2025

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

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

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

I had been vacillating during the last month between Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker.

From "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer