Vacillate vs Vagary - What's the difference?
vacillate | vagary |
To sway unsteadily from one side to the other; oscillate.
* 1910:
To swing indecisively from one course of action or opinion to another.
* 2004: , Character: Profiles in Presidential Courage
An erratic, unpredictable occurrence or action.
* 1871 , , At Last: A Christmas In The West Indies , ch. 8:
An impulsive or illogical desire; a caprice or whim.
* 1905 , , War of the Classes , Preface:
As a verb vacillate
is to sway unsteadily from one side to the other; oscillate.As a noun vagary is
an erratic, unpredictable occurrence or action.vacillate
English
Verb
(vacillat)- 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; [...]
- On the streets of Berlin, Ruth and her compatriots vacillated "between hope and despair."
Synonyms
* (to sway from one side to the other) stagger * (to swing indecisively) blow hot and cold, waffleExternal links
* * *Anagrams
* ----vagary
English
Noun
(vagaries)- It now turns out that the Pitch Lake, like most other things, owes its appearance on the surface to no convulsion or vagary at all, but to a most slow, orderly, and respectable process of nature, by which buried vegetable matter, which would have become peat, and finally brown coal, in a temperate climate, becomes, under the hot tropic soil, asphalt and oil.
- And then came the day when my socialism grew respectable,—still a vagary of youth, it was held, but romantically respectable.