VAS-ih-layt

Definition

(verb) To waver indecisively between different options or opinions; to go back and forth without reaching a conclusion.

Example

She vacillated for weeks over whether to take the job offer — drafting acceptance emails she never sent, then resignation letters she never printed, oscillating between certainty and doubt with every passing hour.

Word Origin

Vacillate derives from the Latin vacillare, meaning “to sway” or “to totter” — originally describing the physical motion of something rocking unsteadily from side to side. It entered English in the 16th century carrying both its literal sense of physical swaying and its figurative sense of a mind that cannot settle — rocking back and forth between positions without ever finding its footing on either side.