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oscillate
in a sentence

show 90 more with this conextual meaning
  • All morning, I oscillate between worrying about Hana and thinking of Alex.†   (source)
  • But when her eyes focus on it, she sees nothing except the oscillating door, same as before.†   (source)
  • Muted now, not strident, not announcing itself with a clarion, but waxing and waning in steady oscillations.†   (source)
  • The fact that there was a warren two or three days' journey to the south flickered and oscillated down among them as a penny wavers down through deep water, moving one way and the other, shifting, vanishing, reappearing, but always sinking toward the firm bottom.†   (source)
  • It was a medium-size oscillating plastic table fan, like you might buy in Woolworth's.†   (source)
  • Medical research has determined the periods of oscillation, angles of swing, and radiuses, and speeds of rotation most likely to produce motion sickness.†   (source)
  • The thump was the fan oscillating from side to side where the frame made contact with the concrete on each revolution.†   (source)
  • They spent that summer oscillating between childhood, which still held them in its clasp, and their awakening as man and woman.†   (source)
  • Doctors came running up from every direction with needles, lights, tubes, rubber mallets and oscillating metal tines.†   (source)
  • Harris shivered in a sleeveless cotton shirt, his eyeballs oscillating, his fingers tugging at his collar, then adjusting a pith helmet which Matron didn't realize he had with him.†   (source)
  • The oscillating fan chased the flies around the living room.†   (source)
  • The needle within her wavered for a moment, burning its oscillating way between two courses: should she say that he would not, and see them kill him?†   (source)
  • He saw Villiers' eyes widen; the gun shook, its oscillating shadow cast against the wall.†   (source)
  • Wheels spun hypnotically, illusions among their spokes oscillating back and forth in gleaming counterpoint.†   (source)
  • But if you two will stop oscillating, I'll call him, make sure that nobody has retrieved that recording. and tell him to erase—then it's gone forever, computer memory is all or nothing.†   (source)
  • He continued to circle and pinch and oscillate.†   (source)
  • Maia and Jan had never had a single home, but had oscillated between their parents' families like two small shuttlecocks.†   (source)
  • We got a whole back room full of your audio oscillators, gunshot machines, contact mikes, everything, man.†   (source)
  • Perhaps because my coming assignation with the divine Lapidus had caused me to oscillate between rapture and apprehension, I tried to quell both emotions by drinking several cans of beer—thus violating my self-imposed rule about alcohol during daylight or working hours.†   (source)
  • The first thing they knew, I marched in where they were all playing Old Maid and pulled the electric oscillating fan out by the plug, and everything got real hot.†   (source)
  • String theorists believe that all of the different "fundamental" particles of the Standard Model are really just sub-microscopic strings oscillating in different ways.
  • He oscillates between playing both sports or just focusing on football.
  • Mike had thought up a dandy; his "illness" was wild oscillations in conditioning Warden's residence.†   (source)
  • We were much pleased with way Alvarez oscillated when he did see it.†   (source)
  • All afternoon Claude hunkers inside his shop above the hundreds of little bottles of florals and orientals and fougeres in his vitrine, pinks and carmines and baby blues, and no one enters, and an oscillating electric fan blows across his face to the left, then to the right, and he does not read or move at all except to periodically reach a hand beneath his stool and grab a handful of biscuits from a round tin and stuff them into his mouth.†   (source)
  • She has skated right down into the pool, she's now oscillating back and forth from one side of the pool to the other, skating up one bank, almost to the lip, turning around, skating down and across and up the opposite side.†   (source)
  • At the very top of the plume, in the greatest violence and turmoil, the water is beaten and pulverized into a fine mist, and the air that is pushed out of the way by the upward jet of water propels the mist in its own arc until it slowly begins to sink in diaphanous curtains that oscillate in the breeze.†   (source)
  • He oscillated hourly between anguish and exhilaration, multiplying fantastically the grandeur of his victories and exaggerating tragically the seriousness of his defeats.†   (source)
  • Then she spread a map of the city on the floor and held the pendulum a foot and a half above it, waiting for the oscillations to tell her her sister-in-law's address, but after trying all afternoon she realized that the system would not work unless Ferula had a fixed address.†   (source)
  • The sides of her porcine nose oscillated with her labored breathing, and her eyes bulged so that Alessandro, horrified, was ready to catch them were they to pop out at him like champagne corks.†   (source)
  • He watched the lights ahead move onto the glacier as if to match the stars, for not only did every lantern sparkle like a little golden sun, but it made a small circle of yellow light that darted back and forth in front of the man who carried it, oscillating as he moved his head.†   (source)
  • Prof's example damped my oscillating.†   (source)
  • He was running its heat up, then down, on an eleven-minute cycle, while oscillating its air pressure on a short cycle, ca.†   (source)
  • Nobody knew Wyoh's virtues better than I…. but she oscillated between fierceness and too-human compassion—and I had learned already that a "head of state," even an acting one, must have neither.†   (source)
  • Was beginning to believe that he had been overloaded and either burnt out something or gone into cybernetic breakdown that requires computer equivalent of lobotomy to stop oscillations.†   (source)
  • My intentions toward Star had oscillated from dishonorable to honorable and back again, but had always been practical from the moment I laid eyes on her.†   (source)
  • Now that the polar regions had been opened up, a considerable fraction of the human race oscillated from Arctic to Antarctic at six monthly intervals, seeking the long, nightiess polar summer.†   (source)
  • I felt myself powerless to stop the oscillations of the cold steel.†   (source)
  • For years I had condemned her as a woman without heart, who loved merely power over men and the momentary satisfaction to vanity or flesh which they could give her, who lived in a strange loveless oscillation between calculation and instinct.†   (source)
  • His life oscillates, as everyone's does, not merely between two poles, such as the body and the spirit, the saint and the sinner, but between thousand and thousands.†   (source)
  • The doll's neck oscillated a little, its wooden lower jaw dropped and wavered and a shrill high-pitched woman's voice spoke: 'What is it, John?†   (source)
  • Am I not, as I walk, trembling with strange oscillations and vibrations of sympathy, which, unmoored as I am from a private being, bid me embrace these engrossed flocks; these starers and trippers; these errand-boys and furtive and fugitive girls who, ignoring their doom, look in at shop-windows?†   (source)
  • Oscillation upon the pavement always means an affaire de coeur.†   (source)
  • The oscillatory motion was imparted to this by one tentacle of the handling-machine.†   (source)
  • Always alone, his soul oscillated, first on the side of death, then on the side of life, doggedly.†   (source)
  • At last the passenger carriages rolled in, oscillating before coming to a standstill.†   (source)
  • A slight oscillation showed Dantes that all went well.†   (source)
  • Your poise will be more powerful than any oscillating tendency of mine.†   (source)
  • This was the last oscillation of the pendulum.†   (source)
  • The lantern oscillated violently, and went out.†   (source)
  • A certain oscillation set all the horizons of his brains in motion.†   (source)
  • He put a few spokes over, and I watched the compass-card swing slowly to N.N.W. and steady itself with slight oscillations.†   (source)
  • Granted that the great Life Force has hit on the device of the clockmaker's pendulum, and uses the earth for its bob; that the history of each oscillation, which seems so novel to us the actors, is but the history of the last oscillation repeated; nay more, that in the unthinkable infinitude of time the sun throws off the earth and catches it again a thousand times as a circus rider throws up a ball, and that the total of all our epochs is but the moment between the toss and the catch,…†   (source)
  • When Duane reached the crossing of the roads the name Fairfield on the sign-post seemed to be the thing that tipped the oscillating balance of decision in favor of that direction.†   (source)
  • In his dream he saw the turntable whirling around its spindle, so fast it became invisible, inaudible, not simply rotating wildly in place, but moving in a strange lateral undulation so that the arm beneath which it turned began to oscillate supplely, as if it were breathing—very useful, one might suppose, for the vibrato and portamento of strings and human voices.†   (source)
  • Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum.†   (source)
  • When a woman has been seriously wronged by a man she no longer oscillates, and the usual symptom is a broken bell wire.†   (source)
  • This was a body resembling a milk can in its general form, above which oscillated a pear-shaped receptacle, and from which a stream of white powder flowed into a circular basin below.†   (source)
  • The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dull thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward.†   (source)
  • From under this great panoply she peeped up in a nervous, hesitating fashion at our windows, while her body oscillated backward and forward, and her fingers fidgeted with her glove buttons.†   (source)
  • What is a fray? an oscillation?†   (source)
  • Gringoire mounted the stool, and succeeded, not without some oscillations of head and arms, in regaining his centre of gravity.†   (source)
  • And farther still, beyond those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless distance lured one to itself.†   (source)
  • My impression is, that I was in a state of confusion about it, and, oscillating between the two points, touched neither.†   (source)
  • This same individual, who has so completely sacrificed his own free will, has no natural propensity to obedience; he cowers, it is true, before the pettiest officer; but he braves the law with the spirit of a conquered foe as soon as its superior force is removed: his oscillations between servitude and license are perpetual.†   (source)
  • In fact, we must not dissemble that the oscillation of the tall trees and the reflection of the moon in the dark underwood gave him serious uneasiness.†   (source)
  • In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of nature.†   (source)
  • I did so with a lightened heart; but when we last looked back, Mr. Guppy was still oscillating in the same troubled state of mind.†   (source)
  • It sometimes happens at such times that the human mind would willingly change its position; but as nothing urges or guides it forwards, it oscillates to and fro without progressive motion.†   (source)
  • It seemed to her that the ground of the oscillating square went up the walls and that the floor dipped on end like a tossing boat.†   (source)
  • Even lifeless figures, as vessels and stools—let them be drawn ever so correctly—lose all effect so soon as they lack the resting upon their centre of gravity, and have a certain swimming and oscillating appearance.†   (source)
  • "Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in Jonah's room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all, though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung.†   (source)
  • The bit of wood, after disappearing, returned to the surface and oscillated to and fro with the waves.†   (source)
  • Then the passengers in the "Hirondelle" ended by falling asleep, some with open mouths, others with lowered chins, leaning against their neighbour's shoulder, or with their arm passed through the strap, oscillating regularly with the jolting of the carriage; and the reflection of the lantern swinging without, on the crupper of the wheeler; penetrating into the interior through the chocolate calico curtains, threw sanguineous shadows over all these motionless people.†   (source)
  • The struggle in Mr. Guppy's breast and the numerous oscillations it occasioned him between his mother's door and us were sufficiently conspicuous in the windy street (particularly as his hair wanted cutting) to make us hurry away.†   (source)
  • As soon as we had arrived at the rock my uncle took the compass, laid it horizontally, and questioned the needle, which, after a few oscillations, presently assumed a fixed position.†   (source)
  • It is no longer anything but a mass of sonorous vibrations incessantly sent forth from the numerous belfries; floats, undulates, bounds, whirls over the city, and prolongs far beyond the horizon the deafening circle of its oscillations.†   (source)
  • When the boatman had taken his departure, he remained standing stupidly on the strand, staring straight before him and perceiving objects only through magnifying oscillations which rendered everything a sort of phantasmagoria to him.†   (source)
  • Quasimodo stationed himself in front of this open throat; he crouched and rose with the oscillations of the bell, breathed in this overwhelming breath, gazed by turns at the deep place, which swarmed with people, two hundred feet below him, and at that enormous, brazen tongue which came, second after second, to howl in his ear.†   (source)
  • Does not that hideous balance, whose two scales, pauperism and parasitism, so mournfully preserve their mutual equilibrium, oscillate before you as it does before us?†   (source)
  • One would have said that he was a pendulum which was no longer wound up, and whose oscillations were growing shorter before ceasing altogether.†   (source)
  • …Europe lent an ear, armies put themselves in motion, parks of artillery rumbled, pontoons stretched over the rivers, clouds of cavalry galloped in the storm, cries, trumpets, a trembling of thrones in every direction, the frontiers of kingdoms oscillated on the map, the sound of a superhuman sword was heard, as it was drawn from its sheath; they beheld him, him, rise erect on the horizon with a blazing brand in his hand, and a glow in his eyes, unfolding amid the thunder, his two…†   (source)
  • …the universal life goes and comes in unknown quantities, rolling entirely in the invisible mystery of effluvia, employing everything, not losing a single dream, not a single slumber, sowing an animalcule here, crumbling to bits a planet there, oscillating and winding, making of light a force and of thought an element, disseminated and invisible, dissolving all, except that geometrical point, the I; bringing everything back to the soul-atom; expanding everything in God, entangling all…†   (source)
  • Slow and measured steps resounded for some time on the timber work, gradually dying away as they retreated to a greater distance; the group of black forms vanished, a glimmer of light oscillated and floated, communicating to the vault a reddish glow which grew fainter, then disappeared; the silence became profound once more, the obscurity became complete, blindness and deafness resumed possession of the shadows; and Jean Valjean, not daring to stir as yet, remained for a long time…†   (source)
  • In the meantime, the unfortunate topman was losing his strength; his anguish could not be discerned on his face, but his exhaustion was visible in every limb; his arms were contracted in horrible twitchings; every effort which he made to re-ascend served but to augment the oscillations of the foot-rope; he did not shout, for fear of exhausting his strength.†   (source)
  • …the men in chains did not utter a syllable; from time to time the sound of a blow became audible as the cudgels descended on shoulder-blades or skulls; some of these men were yawning; their rags were terrible; their feet hung down, their shoulders oscillated, their heads clashed together, their fetters clanked, their eyes glared ferociously, their fists clenched or fell open inertly like the hands of corpses; in the rear of the convoy ran a band of children screaming with laughter.†   (source)
  • The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated lighter?†   (source)
  • Similarly, the preterite of /to blow/ may be either /blowed/ or /blew/, and that of /to drink/ oscillates between /drank/ and /drunk/, and that of /to fall/ is still usually /fell/, though /fallen/ has appeared, and that of /to shake/ may be either /shaken/ or /shuck/.†   (source)
  • Firstly, oscillation between events of imperial and of local interest, the anticipated diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria (born 1820, acceded 1837) and the posticipated opening of the new municipal fish market: secondly, apprehension of opposition from extreme circles on the questions of the respective visits of Their Royal Highnesses the duke and duchess of York (real) and of His Majesty King Brian Boru (imaginary): thirdly, a conflict between professional etiquette and professional…†   (source)
  • I too many and many a time cross'd the river of old, Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies, Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left the rest in strong shadow, Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south, Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water, Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams, Look'd at the fine centrifugal spokes of light…†   (source)
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