VACILLATION • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Vacillation

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/vˌæsəlˈeɪʃən/ Listen

noun

Vacillation n.

The act of vacillating; a moving one way and the other; a wavering. "His vacillations, always exhibited most pitiably in emergencies."

Unsteadiness of purpose; changeableness. "There is a vacillation, or an alternation of knowledge and doubt."

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Etymology of 'Vacillation'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Vacillation" Quotes from Famous Books

... it was born on. The nurse thinks it was Sunday, the surgeon thinks it was Tuesday. The child will never know its own birthday. It will always be choosing first one and then the other, and will never be able to make up its mind permanently. This will breed vacillation and uncertainty in its opinions about religion, and politics, and business, and sweethearts, and everything, and will undermine its principles, and rot them away, and make the poor thing characterless, and its success ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... she had a high sense of family obligation, and on the Jack Stepneys' return from their honeymoon she felt it incumbent upon her to light the drawing-room lamps and extract her best silver from the Safe Deposit vaults. 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 ...

— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... extrication of Louis XVI. from his financial difficulties, without a radical change of government, disappeared forever. The controllers that succeeded Necker only plunged deeper and deeper into debt and deficit. It is needless to follow them in their flounderings. A long experience of the vacillation of the government both as to persons and as to systems had discouraged the hopes of conscientious patriotism, and strengthened the opposition to reform of all those who were interested in abuses. From the well-meaning king, if left to his own ways, nothing more could be ...

— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... was to run with it to the school, he was told in addition not to look behind him if Dick called after him to bring it back, but to run along with it just the same. Having taken this precaution against vacillation, Dick watched his messenger down the road, and turned into the house whistling an air in such ghastly jerks and starts, that whistling seemed to be the act the very furthest removed from that which was ...

— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... met the Turks again and again from their youth up, prepared grimly for revenge; sanguine boys, who held arms in set fight for the first time that day, looked forward eagerly to the moment of action. Even to the last the incurable vacillation of the allied admirals was felt: they suggested a council of war. Don John's reply was worthy of him: "The time for councils is past," he said; "do not trouble yourselves about aught but fighting." Then he entered his ...

— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

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