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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Vacillating

Vacillate \Vac"il*late\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Vacillated; p. pr. & vb. n. Vacillating.] [L. vacillare, vacillatum; cf. Skr. va[~n]c.]

  1. To move one way and the other; to reel or stagger; to waver.

    [A spheroid] is always liable to shift and vacillatefrom one axis to another.
    --Paley.

  2. To fluctuate in mind or opinion; to be unsteady or inconstant; to waver.

    Syn: See Fluctuate.

Vacillating

Vacillating \Vac"il*la`ting\, a. Inclined to fluctuate; wavering.
--Tennyson. -- Vac"il*la`ting*ly, adv.

Wiktionary
vacillating
  1. Liable to vacillate; wavering, irresolute. v

  2. (present participle of vacillate English)

WordNet
vacillating

adj. uncertain in purpose or action [syn: vacillant, wavering]

Usage examples of "vacillating".

Bismarck and Cavour seized the opportunity of making extremely useful for Germany and Italy the irrelevant and vacillating idealism and the timid absolutism of the third Napoleon.

It was waves of light, creamily golden light tinged with a border of green, and within its vacillating luminescence was a message.

Weak and vacillating as he was in most things, it seemed that the earl could be strong in his dislike of his son, and firm in his determination not to condone the infamy of his behavior toward Hortensia Winthrop.

One by one, as if bewitched, the hara in our side of the room began to walk slowly forward, toward the vacillating forms of the huyana.

The home Government, however, had acted in a vacillating way, and it was only the conquest of Natal by the Boers which caused them to claim it as a British colony.

When the Regent, who had been a friend of her late husband, removed into the palace of the Pharaohs, he made her advances, and the clever and decided woman knew how to make herself at first agreeable, and finally indispensable, to the vacillating man.

The wazir was a vacillating bootlick named al-Mazdaghani, who sided with the Batini - the Fida'in by another name.

Right to the end, Abute had learned, the board had been vacillating between two and even three of the candidates—though no one had revealed to him the identity of the other choices.

A few days later, on the connecting train to Paris, as he considered where to sit, vacillating as usual, he nearly walked straight past her.

She had informed Paul of her suspicions, and he was so shocked by the double whammy of learning that his wife was both illegally pregnant and possibly scarpered that he was still in his Concord office, vacillating about what to do.

At least the security of Jessie's children was assured during these dark hours of maximum danger, no vacillating about firearms in this house, Mamaw had been locked and loaded since the Kennedy assassination.

It seemed to bear down upon my brain, to clog the power of thought, to make me vacillating.