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vacillate
in a sentence

show 84 more with this conextual meaning
  • He vacillates, halfheartedly initiates, and then draws back and regroups.   (source)
    vacillates = changes his mind back and forth between conflicting ideas
  • the dollar had fallen, gold risen; strikes had crippled, and governments had vacillated between action and paralysis.   (source)
    vacillated = swayed back and forth
  • And so long as we vacillate, so long will we pay dearly for the dubious pleasure of not having to make up our minds.   (source)
    vacillate = to change one's mind back and forth between conflicting ideas
  • Two people were involved-the real murderer, cunning, resourceful and calculating-and the pseudo murderer, stupid, vacillating and suggestible.   (source)
    vacillating = changing one's mind back and forth between conflicting ideas
  • I do not think that even I could produce any effect on a character that according to his own brother's admission is irretrievably weak and vacillating.   (source)
  • The younger boy was quicker, but vacillating.   (source)
    vacillating = changing his mind back and forth between conflicting ideas
  • When the relations of a couple are vacillating and neither one thing nor the other, no sort of enterprise can be undertaken.   (source)
    vacillating = changing one's mind back and forth between conflicting ideas  OR  swaying back and forth
  • asked the landlord, vacillating weakly.   (source)
    vacillating = changing his mind (or doubting his earlier opinion)
  • But, under the real circumstances of the case, if we are to suppose gold the motive of this outrage, we must also imagine the perpetrator so vacillating an idiot as to have abandoned his gold and his motive together.   (source)
    vacillating = changing one's mind back and forth between conflicting ideas
  • The poor woman was very vacillating in her repentance.   (source)
  • It is not true, as Akhilleus charges, that Agamemnon shirks battle; he can fight well, but is subject to repeated moods of doubt and vacillation.   (source)
  • I vacillated among three or four routes into the tangle.†   (source)
  • But she was not there to be entertained with the vacillations of a minor Victorian esthete.†   (source)
  • 132): The White Commission's stand on the trigger of the whole affair-two buckets of pig blood on a beam over the stage seems to be overly weak and vacillating, even in light of the scant concrete proof.†   (source)
  • She knew she'd surprised him, could feel him vacillating between anger and confusion.†   (source)
  • Caroline vacillated for a moment, then picked up the baby and the bulky bag and went to the restroom in the back of the store.†   (source)
  • In these days Shade Buckheath vacillated from the suppliant attitude to the threatening.†   (source)
  • Nabbi looked back and forth between Blitzen and the tear, his expression vacillating between apprehension and greed.†   (source)
  • He vacillated between panic and intoxication.†   (source)
  • He berated Adams in nearly every way possible—for his "great intrinsic defects of character," his "disgusting egotism," weaknesses, vacillation, his "eccentric tendencies," his "bitter animosity" toward his own cabinet.†   (source)
  • It does not mean vacillating at all.†   (source)
  • When she opened her eyes, she watched and listened to the even fuller roomful as carefully, and as carelessly, as vacillating as though she were on the point of departure.†   (source)
  • ...she vacillated between the certainty that he still loved her and the hopelessness of their situation.   (source)
    vacillated = changed her mind back and forth
  • I know of nothing to make me vacillate.   (source)
  • the line on the monitor vacillated
  • From the near vision of that certainty he fell back on suspense and vacillation with a sense of repose.   (source)
    vacillation = indecision (change one's mind back and forth between conflicting ideas)
  • The vacillation between the various plans that were proposed had even increased after the Emperor had been at headquarters for a month.   (source)
    vacillation = changing one's mind back and forth between conflicting ideas
  • His manner vacillated between hostility and a craven sort of fawning-like a stud mongrel that has been kicked too often.†   (source)
  • He vacillated helplessly for a few seconds and then spun himself around and fled inside the nearest of the hallways in search of Yossarian and Dunbar, hoping to catch them in time and bring them back to the rescue with news of the remarkable clash between the old man and Major — de Coverley.†   (source)
  • At first be vacillated.†   (source)
  • Maintaining nonbelief (constantly, systematically, without the slightest vacillation) requires a tremendous effort and the proper trainingin other words, frequent police interrogations.†   (source)
  • American Intelligence has its share of vacillating autocrats, rarely communicating fully with each other.†   (source)
  • He would vacillate between self-absorption and depression.†   (source)
  • There was no feminine vacillation, no coyness of obvious desire and intention to succumb at last.†   (source)
  • But this waiting—evasion—and so like Clyde, his vacillating, indefinite, uncertain mood, always.†   (source)
  • Ordinarily he arrived at decisions without vacillation, but this one evidently had him bothered.†   (source)
  • He would not be vacillating again—he WOULD do what he had meant to do, this time.†   (source)
  • Yet hitherto our star has been a vacillating and wavering star?†   (source)
  • His looks appeared to be vacillating between hope and fear.†   (source)
  • Her resolve, however, had been taken, and it seemed vacillating even to childishness to abandon it now, unless for graver reasons.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Peniston's rare entertainments were preceded by days of heart-rending vacillation as to every detail of the feast, from the seating of the guests to the pattern of the table-cloth, and in the course of one of these preliminary discussions she had imprudently suggested to her cousin Grace that, as the dinner was a family affair, she might be included in it.†   (source)
  • The student brooded over the phenomenon of cell colonies; he learned about transitional organisms, algae, whose individual cells, wrapped in a coating of gelatin, were often widely dispersed, but nevertheless built multicelled formations, which, had they been asked, would not have known if they should be regarded as a settlement of single-celled individuals or as a single living entity, and in providing their answer would have vacillated strangely between the use of "I" and "we."†   (source)
  • He honestly mistook his sensuality for romantic emotion, his vacillation for the artistic temperament, and his idleness for philosophic calm.†   (source)
  • Her excitement and joy were spurs, inspirations; but she was utterly impracticable in her ideas, and she flitted from one plan to another with bewildering vacillation.†   (source)
  • As time flew by he excused his vacillation on the score that winter was not a good time to try to cross the desert.†   (source)
  • How many of these vacillating shoppers and tired shop-assistants realised that it was a divine event that drew them together?†   (source)
  • Nothing she owed, however, or tried to instil into her vacillating mind, quite did away with that insidious suspicion.†   (source)
  • And so as he vacillated between Joe's cautious advice to go slow and his own pity the days and weeks slipped by.†   (source)
  • Of course, this editor was immediately arrested by the military power; but his bold words were already in the hands of the public, and produced a great effect: so great an effect that the Government, after some vacillation, withdrew the state of siege; though at the same time it strengthened the military organisation and made it more stringent.†   (source)
  • The sheriff heard these opinions with great indignation; and when he completed the last arrangement for the division, by carrying with his own hands a trout of a large size, and placing it on four different piles in succession, as his vacillating ideas of justice required, gave vent to his spleen.†   (source)
  • The youth and his female companion had made several hurried, and vacillating conjectures concerning their nature, when a current of the night air brought the rush of trampling footsteps, too sensibly, to their ears, to render mistake any longer possible.†   (source)
  • Oh, it must have been the young man, certainly, for he was strong and industrious, while the abbe was aged and weak; besides, his mind was too vacillating to allow him to carry out an idea.†   (source)
  • It was the same harsh voice, the same brow dimmed and wrinkled with tan, the same free, wild, and vacillating glance.†   (source)
  • "Very well; I hope you feel the content you express: at any rate, your good sense will tell you that it is too soon yet to yield to the vacillating fears of Lot's wife.†   (source)
  • Now it is in the nature of all governments to seek constantly to enlarge their sphere of action; hence it is almost impossible that such a government should not ultimately succeed, because it acts with a fixed principle and a constant will, upon men, whose position, whose notions, and whose desires are in continual vacillation.†   (source)
  • Don't you think it is high time we stirred a little life into all this slackness and vacillation and cowardice?†   (source)
  • It was no simple girl made with a little of our earth, and dimly lighted within by the vacillating ray of a woman's soul.†   (source)
  • He disliked the appearance of vacillation, too; and then he had a profound respect for his kinsman's seamanship.†   (source)
  • Hearing these decisive and terrible words, Lady Macbeth, who had been waiting for a sign of weakness or vacillation on the part of her son-in-law, rose and, with a scared look, left the library.†   (source)
  • Hist then conveyed the ideas of Hetty, in the best manner she could, to the attentive Indians, who heard her words with some such surprise as an American of our own times would be apt to betray at a suggestion that the great modern but vacillating ruler of things human, public opinion, might be wrong.†   (source)
  • I am not to blame that the Minister is vacillating, a coward, dense, dilatory, and has all bad qualities.†   (source)
  • On the whole his surmises, in addition to what he knew of the fact, increased his friendliness and tolerance towards Ladislaw, and made him understand the vacillation which kept him at Middlemarch after he had said that he should go away.†   (source)
  • The vacillation of his head and the fixity of his eyeballs suggested the thought of the magnetic needle seeking the pole.†   (source)
  • Round the samovar and the hostess the conversation had been meanwhile vacillating in just the same way between three inevitable topics: the latest piece of public news, the theater, and scandal.†   (source)
  • But this Ark had its dangers as well as its temptations, and after wasting near an hour in vacillating evolutions, always at a safe distance from the rifle, the Hurons seemed suddenly to take their resolution, and began to display it by giving eager chase to the girls.†   (source)
  • Their counsels became wild and vacillating to the last degree: one hour they were for giving way for the present till they could hatch another plot; the next they all but sent an order for the arrest in the lump of all the workmen's committees; the next they were on the point of ordering their brisk young general to take any excuse that offered for another massacre.†   (source)
  • —ENCHANTMENTS AND DESOLATIONS even proved easier for him than for Romeo; Romeo was obliged to scale a wall, Marius had only to use a little force on one of the bars of the decrepit gate which vacillated in its rusty recess, after the fashion of old people's teeth.†   (source)
  • We shall leave him to his vacillating and confused expedients, in order to pass to the description of certain other personages in the drama.†   (source)
  • In the second category Pierre reckoned himself and others like him, seeking and vacillating, who had not yet found in Freemasonry a straight and comprehensible path, but hoped to do so.†   (source)
  • By the vacillating movements of some fifty or a hundred bulls, that led the advance, it remained questionable, for many moments, what course they intended to pursue.†   (source)
  • To be obliged to confess this to oneself: infallibility is not infallible, there may exist error in the dogma, all has not been said when a code speaks, society is not perfect, authority is complicated with vacillation, a crack is possible in the immutable, judges are but men, the law may err, tribunals may make a mistake! to behold a rift in the immense blue pane of the firmament!†   (source)
  • …in the King and the King with royalty, did so almost without noticing the man in the fierce crushing of the idea, the vast storm of the Assembly-Tribunal, the public wrath interrogating, Capet not knowing what to reply, the alarming, stupefied vacillation by that royal head beneath that sombre breath, the relative innocence of all in that catastrophe, of those who condemned as well as of the man condemned,—he had looked on those things, he had contemplated that giddiness; he had seen…†   (source)
  • In the mean time, the unconscious Ellen herself moved about the feeble and less resolute Inez, with her accustomed assiduity and tenderness, exhibiting in her frank features those changing emotions of joy and regret which occasionally beset her, as her active mind dwelt on the decided step she had just taken, with the contending doubts and hopes, and possibly with some of the mental vacillation, that was natural to her situation and sex.†   (source)
  • Lines and colours almost persuade me that I too can be heroic, I, who make phrases so easily, am so soon seduced, love what comes next, and cannot clench my fist, but vacillate weakly making phrases according to my circumstances.†   (source)
  • She had become used to his idle threats and disgusted with his vacillations.†   (source)
  • They walked on vaguely, till she paused, and her little voice began anew: "It seems so weak, too, to vacillate like this!†   (source)
  • At another time I should have been amused by this; but I felt that we were all constrained and uneasy, and I watched Mr. Micawber so anxiously, in his vacillations between an evident disposition to reveal something, and a counter-disposition to reveal nothing, that I was in a perfect fever.†   (source)
  • His vacillations between law and medicine lasted so long that midsummer arrived before he finally separated from Mr. Badger and entered on an experimental course of Messrs.†   (source)
  • I know of nothing to make me vacillate.†   (source)
  • She paused for an instant in her work to look at him, and her look revived that former pain in her father's breast; in his poor weak breast, so full of contradictions, vacillations, inconsistencies, the little peevish perplexities of this ignorant life, mists which the morning without a night only can clear away.†   (source)
  • But in moments like this, the things which one sees vacillate and are precipitated, and one pauses for nothing.†   (source)
  • The Doctor regained his tablets, a little the worse from having fallen among the grass which had been subject to the action of the flames, and was consoling himself for this slight misfortune by recording uninterruptedly such different vacillations in light and shadow as he chose to consider phenomena.†   (source)
  • "Yes," he thought, "this is right; I am on the right road; I have the solution; I must end by holding fast to something; my resolve is taken; let things take their course; let us no longer vacillate; let us no longer hang back; this is for the interest of all, not for my own; I am Madeleine, and Madeleine I remain.†   (source)
  • Their state of mind, vacillating, uncertain, alternately timorous and [Pg064] pugnacious, has been well described by Henry Cabot Lodge in his essay on "Colonialism in America.†   (source)
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