How to Use vacillation in a Sentence

vacillation

noun

• The action and space transform to reflect this vacillation, as seen through the lens of John’s production design.
  — John Von Rhein, chicagotribune.com, 27 Feb. 2018
• All the while, Trump forces news outlets to chronicle his vacillations.
  — Callum Borchers, Washington Post, 29 May 2018
• The team official placed blame for the league's vacillation squarely on Vincent.
  — Dave Clark, The Enquirer, 10 Jan. 2023
• The big surprise is that China appears to have stepped in to fill the vacuum left by American vacillation in the Middle East.
  — David A. Andelman, CNN, 11 Mar. 2023
• John Kerry’s vacillations about the Iraq war were frequent enough to fell his presidential hopes.
  — Katy Waldman, Slate Magazine, 26 Apr. 2017
• The Chinese are said to take the long view of history, unlike their vacillation-prone American rivals.
  — WSJ, 28 Dec. 2021
• Voters’ vacillation between a long career ahead and the thrill of honoring a career found late in life was evident in the voting results.
  — Leila Cobo, Billboard, 17 Nov. 2022
• This would require a change in the culture at the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom from one of timidity and vacillation to one of decisiveness and courage—not an easy business.
  — WSJ, 17 Oct. 2021
• On Wednesday, Rajoy said the time for Puigdemont's vacillation on the independence question was over.
  — Euan McKirdy, CNN, 19 Oct. 2017
• There were no real jumps or serious dips—just some standard vacillation.
  — Lindsey Lanquist, SELF, 14 June 2018
• Sheldon called the drop in indicated cases a vacillation in the data and not a result of agency policy to close cases more rapidly.
  — David Jackson, chicagotribune.com, 11 May 2017
• That has led to some policy vacillations, most damagingly over health care.
  — The Economist, 12 Sep. 2019
• That's anything but a certainty, though, given Trump's constant vacillations on issues like this.
  — Aaron Blake, Washington Post, 20 June 2018
• However, when her boyfriend breaks things off with her because of her constant vacillations, the rejection sends Juliette into a total tailspin.
  — Justin Lowe, The Hollywood Reporter, 17 May 2017
• Harris’s vacillations seem indicative of the risks for candidates who are looking to match Sanders’s clarity of rhetoric, without a full commitment to substance.
  — Osita Nwanevu, The New Yorker, 28 June 2019
• The Biden White House’s spineless vacillation only validates the terrible timelessness of that truth.
  — The Editors, National Review, 3 Nov. 2023
• The Trump administration’s tilt toward Riyadh and an Israel-Arab détente has been replaced by vacillation.
  — Gerard Baker, WSJ, 10 Jan. 2022
• Diane and Nick go through wild vacillations in their relationship, from open contempt to a gunshot, through a second honeymoon phase, and finally to a murkier, rockier roller-coaster ride.
  — Michael Ordoña, latimes.com, 1 May 2018
• The Winter Olympics typically see a bit more ratings vacillation than its summer counterpart.
  — Michael O'Connell, Billboard, 10 Feb. 2018
• His dialogue is fueled by vacillation, equivocation and contradiction, with sentences that seem to eat their own words.
  — Ben Brantley, New York Times, 26 Mar. 2018
• Obama’s vacillation was blamed for Assad’s subsequent use of chemical weapons.
  — David Banks, The Conversation, 26 Nov. 2019
• After our fleeting brush with normalcy during Omicron’s retreat, another very transmissible new version of the coronavirus is on the rise—and with it, a fresh wave of vacillation between mask-donning and mask-doffing.
  — Yasmin Tayag, The Atlantic, 8 Apr. 2022
• Gray whales seem to have gone through these more dramatic vacillations, enduring three different periods of major mortalities and bouncing back before the most recent five-year event.
  — Karen Garcia, Los Angeles Times, 19 Mar. 2024
• Her ability to keep her word flow off-balance matched her vacillation between strength and weakness, happiness and sadness, codependence and independence.
  — Bob Gendron, Chicago Tribune, 23 Feb. 2023
• But if his true preferences are pro-Russian, then his vacillation between following his gut instincts and the wishes of his advisers could be explained by simple indecisiveness.
  — Scott Radnitz, Washington Post, 24 Apr. 2018
• This vacillation was impossible for Republicans to understand, because many of them had actual desires for what the bill would accomplish.
  — David A. Graham, The Atlantic, 6 Sep. 2017
• Others think that such vacillations might encode and transmit information.
  — Quanta Magazine, 22 Mar. 2016
• Education leaders say they were not terribly surprised by the administration’s vacillation, as the 100-day plan was always vague and largely symbolic.
  — Erica L. Green, BostonGlobe.com, 12 Feb. 2021
• Standard fare for a writer, but the book is undergirded with a humorously adolescent vacillation; Bandini is given to extreme changes in mood on topics ranging from love to Catholicism to prostitution.
  — The Editors, The Atlantic, 22 Dec. 2017
• The language of vacillation, which dominates the sequence, continually reconstitutes itself from joy to self-reproach, from choice to indecision.
  — Helen Vendler, Harper's magazine, 20 Jan. 2020

Last Updated: 15 Oct 2024