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Fluctuate   /flˈəktʃəwˌeɪt/   Listen
Fluctuate

verb
(past & past part. fluctuated; pres. part. fluctuating)
1.
Cause to fluctuate or move in a wavelike pattern.
2.
Move or sway in a rising and falling or wavelike pattern.  Synonyms: vacillate, waver.
3.
Be unstable.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Fluctuate" Quotes from Famous Books



... the world, with powers Fresh, undiverted to the world without, Firm to their mark, not spent on other things; Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt, Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings. O Life unlike to ours! Who fluctuate idly without term or scope, Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives, And each half lives a hundred different lives; Who wait like thee, but not, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... drawing the food to him. Instead, he reached persistently with his arm, pulled and gnawed at the wires which were in his way, and occasionally picked up and gnawed or pounded with the sticks in the cage. His attention every now and then would come back to the food, but it tended to fluctuate rather rapidly, and in the regular period of observation, thirty minutes, it is unlikely that he attended to the bait itself for as much as five minutes. In this respect as well as many others, Skirrl's behavior contrasts sharply with that of the ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... unstable minds of men! How quickly our intentions fluctuate! All thoughts we lightly change, but mostly when These from some lover's quarrel take their date. But now, so wroth I saw that Saracen With woman, so outrageous in his hate, I weened not only he would ill assuage, But never more would calm, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... the Punjaub, as well as in Kumaon. The Indian teas are already becoming popular in the English market, and the cultivators have the advantage of a demand which is almost unlimited, and of prices which seldom fluctuate ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... Kentucky shore the roily mess of the Ohio, and for several miles exerts a considerable influence in clarification. The Lower Wabash, flowing through a soft clay bottom, runs an erratic course, and its mouth is a variable location, so that the bounds of Illinois and Indiana, hereabout, fluctuate east and west according to the exigencies of the floods. The far-reaching bottom itself, however, is apparently of slight value, giving evidence, in the dreary clumps of dead timber, of ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... your Southern grandees, before the war, were not compelled to drudge for a subsistence; they had to take little thought for the morrow. Their vast landed estates and black slaves were things that did not fluctuate; under the effective supervision of the viperous slave-driver the black Samson rose before the coming of the sun, and the land, nature's own flower garden and man's inalienable heritage, brought forth golden corn and snowy ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... greatly fear that you have allowed zeal, my dear Sir, to outrun discretion. Robin Lyth is a young, and in many ways highly respected, parishioner of mine. He may have been guilty of casual breaches of the laws concerning importation—laws which fluctuate from year to year, and require deep knowledge of legislation both to observe and to administer. I heartily trust that you may not suffer from having discharged your duty in a manner most truly exemplary, if only the example had been the right one. This gentleman is no more Robin ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... some good specimens of Russian enamel, which naturally one supposes to be more inexpensive in the country which creates them, but to our distress we discovered Avenue de l'Opera prices on everything we wished. Each time that we went back the price was different. The market seemed to fluctuate. One blue enamelled belt, upon which I had set my heart, varied in price from one to three dollars each time I looked at it. Finally, one day I hit upon a plan. I asked my friend, Mile, de Falk, to follow me into this shop and not speak ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... which originally pulled the trigger may have been a series of pictures in the mind aroused by printed or spoken words. These pictures fade and are hard to keep steady; their contours and their pulse fluctuate. Gradually the process sets in of knowing what you feel without being entirely certain why you feel it. The fading pictures are displaced by other pictures, and then by names or symbols. But the emotion goes on, capable now of being aroused by the substituted ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... whole picture a kind of magical colouring, which may be mere trickery or may be a genuine illumination, but which, whilst we are not too exacting, brings out pleasant and perplexing effects. The lights and shadows fluctuate, and solid forms melt provokingly into mist; but we must learn to enjoy the uncertain twilight which prevails on the border-land between romance and reality, if we would enjoy the ambiguities and the ironies and the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... opposite qualities—all the great and all the little passions unfavourable to public tranquillity united in the breast of one man, and of that man, unhappily, whose personal caprice can scarce fluctuate for an hour without affecting the destiny of Europe. I see the inward workings of fear struggling with pride in an ardent, enterprising, and tumultuous mind. I see all the captious jealousy of conscious usurpation, dreaded, detested, and obeyed, the giddiness and intoxication of splendid ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... speck, and the loud carols of the fishermen returning home from their day's sport, had sunk into a faint, undistinguished whisper. Our vessel's course for the first hour or so was delightful. Towards night, the weather, which had hitherto proved so serene, began to fluctuate; the wind shifted, and gradually a heavy swell came rolling in from the north-east towards us. As the hour advanced, a storm seemed advancing with it; and a hundred symptoms appeared, the least of which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various

... consider those varieties, which vary in a much wider range than the ordinary ones, and seem to fluctuate between two opposite extremes, as for instance variegated leaves, cultivated varieties with variegated or striped flowers, double flowers and some other anomalies. They are eversporting and ever-returning ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... to Melrose. Then I give up an expensive farm, which I always hated, and turn all my odds and ends into cash. I do not reckon much on my literary exertions—I mean in proportion to former success—because popular taste may fluctuate. But with a moderate degree of the favour which I have always had, my time my own, and my mind unplagued about other things, I may boldly promise myself soon to get the better of this blow. In these circumstances, I should be unjust and ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... Hissing along the vale, and after him The other talking sputters; but soon turn'd His new-grown shoulders on him, and in few Thus to another spake: "Along this path Crawling, as I have done, speed Buoso now!" So saw I fluctuate in successive change Th' unsteady ballast of the seventh hold: And here if aught my tongue have swerv'd, events So strange may be its warrant. O'er mine eyes Confusion hung, and on my thoughts amaze. Yet 'scap'd they not so covertly, but well I ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... me! I cannot explain my extraordinary departure. I suppose I was in such a nervous state that I was obsessed in some mysterious manner and went off like a rocket. I can assure you I feel like a stick this morning. You will forgive me, won't you? for you know that although my affections do fluctuate for some people, they never ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... reserve to liability at which the Bank should aim; but he does not say whether he regards a third as the minimum below which the reserve in the Banking Department should never be, or as a fair average, about which the reserve may fluctuate, sometimes being greater, ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot

... depth of their condescension,—the extent of what they will put up with. There must be a family of some sort, of course, or there would not be a "place;" that is what the family is made for; but it must be established, no more to fluctuate; that is, you may go away, some of you, if you like, or you may die; but nobody must come home that has been away, and nobody must be born. As to anybody being "took in!" Why, the girl defined it; it was not being a ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... disturb the harmony of mankind—whenever they have been desirous to render him unsociable, they have cried out that their gods ordained that he should be so. Thus they render mortals uncertain, make the ethical system fluctuate by founding it upon changeable, capricious idols, whom they represent much more frequently cruel and unjust, than filled with ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... the doctor describing minutely how he had hacked his friend Gibbs's leg off with a hand-saw, laughing hugely thereat, and wiping the icy tears from his cold blue eyes with his delicate cambric handkerchief. Then the fascinating game began to fluctuate, and the luck set back with a steady run into the piles of the banker. Captain Brand liked as little to lose his money as any other gambler in cards, stocks, or dice, and he was somewhat chafed in spirit; but what ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... the barometer did not fluctuate by sudden movements, and they could therefore count on tolerable weather. However, during the first week of April, after a sudden barometrical fall, a renewed rise was marked by a heavy gale of wind, lasting five or six days; then the needle of the instrument remained stationary ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... price (in present valuation) for the latter. Investment securities are, and will be, a drug on the market. In other words, the rate of return to the investor will be high; the rate of interest on long-time loans will be high and stay high, that on short-time loans may fluctuate greatly. The rise in the rate of interest on long-time investments is one of the most vital and far-reaching effects of the war. At bottom, interest always arises from the exchange of present and future goods. The rate of interest, as I have tried to show in my book of that title, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... of the rise or fall be visible, and its continuance in any degree probable. Average estimates are never just but when the object fluctuates, and no reason can be assigned why it should not continue still to fluctuate. The author chooses to allow nothing at all for this: he has taken an average of six years of the war. He knew, for everybody knows, that the first three years were on the whole rather unsuccessful; and that, in consequence of this ill success, trade sunk, and navigation ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Vpadina Akchanaya -81 m (note—Sarygamysh Koli is a lake in north eastern Turkmenistan whose water levels fluctuate widely; at its shallowest, its level is -110 m; it is presently at -60 m, 20 m above Vpadina Akchanaya) highest point: ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.



Words linked to "Fluctuate" :   turn, fluctuation, swing, move, vacillate, displace, change state



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