How to Use vacillation in a Sentence

vacillation

noun
  • Indeed, at least some of the vacillations seem to be driven by public opinion.
    — Matteo Wong, The Atlantic, 3 June 2026
  • There were no real jumps or serious dips—just some standard vacillation.
    — Lindsey Lanquist, SELF, 14 June 2018
  • The vacillation between tragic and comic set pieces does justice to neither.
    — Moises Mendez Ii, TIME, 23 July 2024
  • That has led to some policy vacillations, most damagingly over health care.
    — The Economist, 12 Sep. 2019
  • The team official placed blame for the league's vacillation squarely on Vincent.
    — Dave Clark, The Enquirer, 10 Jan. 2023
  • 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
  • John Kerry’s vacillations about the Iraq war were frequent enough to fell his presidential hopes.
    — Katy Waldman, Slate Magazine, 26 Apr. 2017
  • 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
  • Others think that such vacillations might encode and transmit information.
    — Quanta Magazine, 22 Mar. 2016
  • The Chinese are said to take the long view of history, unlike their vacillation-prone American rivals.
    — WSJ, 28 Dec. 2021
  • 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
  • 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
  • The Winter Olympics typically see a bit more ratings vacillation than its summer counterpart.
    — Michael O'Connell, Billboard, 10 Feb. 2018
  • On Wednesday, Rajoy said the time for Puigdemont's vacillation on the independence question was over.
    — Euan McKirdy, CNN, 19 Oct. 2017
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • The Biden White House’s spineless vacillation only validates the terrible timelessness of that truth.
    — The Editors, National Review, 3 Nov. 2023
  • 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
  • Energy policy vacillation in the US is spooking investors and leaving the country less prepared to compete in the global economy.
    — Tim McDonnell, semafor.com, 16 Apr. 2026
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • There’s no ambiguity on this score, simply a vacillation between mostly depicting him as cold-blooded and occasionally tossing in a gesture towards feeling lonely in the suburbs because that’s where this season is set.
    — Daniel D'addario, Variety, 15 Oct. 2021
  • But other than that speech, Hamlet’s soliloquies are gone, almost entirely, and with them his endless, endlessly fascinating vacillation between action and its opposite.
    — Zachary Woolfe, New York Times, 30 June 2017
  • Superstitious thinking requires a massive investment of energy; the vacillation between hopefulness and despair is what fuels the perpetual thinker’s unending inquiry into what this or that new detail means.
    — Agnes Callard, Harper’s Magazine , 16 Feb. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'vacillation.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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