vacillate means to sway unsteadily from one side to the other; oscillate. It carries an Arena rating of 1820, earned across 9 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, vacillate ranks #454 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words, #746 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #1,177 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #2,273 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
vacillate is pronounced /ˈvæ.sə.leɪt/.
Why “vacillate” is a great word
To waver indecisively between different opinions or courses of action. From Latin vacillātus, past participle of vacillāre ('to sway to and fro, stagger, waver, hesitate'), it first found English purchase in the anxious 1590s. Unlike 'hesitate,' which is a reluctant pause, or 'oscillate,' which denotes a pendulum's metronomic certainty, to vacillate is to be caught in a paralytic current without rhythm or resolution. It is the hand hovering between two switches in a dark room, the mind rehearsing one convincing argument only to immediately conjure its devastating rebuttal, the soul suspended between a fierce desire and a profound dread—the quiet, exhausting torment of a mind that feels most at home in the draft between two certainties.
Etymology
From Latin vacillātum, supine form of vacillō (“sway, waver”). By surface analysis, Latin vacill- + -ate.
verb
- To sway unsteadily from one side to the other; oscillate.e.g.“Its [the barometer's] normal register in the Paumotus [the Tuamotus] was 29.90, and it was quite customary to see it vacillate between 29.85 and 30.00, or even 30.05; […]” — 1910, Jack London, The Heathen:
- To swing indecisively from one course of action or opinion to another.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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