OSCILLATE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Oscillate

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/ˈɑsəlˌeɪt/ Listen

verb

Oscillate v. i. (past & past part. oscillated; pres. part. oscillating)

To move backward and forward; to vibrate like a pendulum; to swing; to sway.

To vary or fluctuate between fixed limits; to act or move in a fickle or fluctuating manner; to change repeatedly, back and forth. "The amount of superior families oscillates rather than changes, that is, it fluctuates within fixed limits."

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Etymology of 'Oscillate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Oscillate" Quotes from Famous Books

... to make it more plain by an illustration, here is a tuning-fork on the table before me. With a vigorous stroke of the bow I set it vibrating. The two prongs separate, oscillate rapidly, and a sound of a certain tone is heard. I connect this tuning-fork, by means of electric wires, with a Deprez recording apparatus which records the vibrations on the blackened surface of a revolving cylinder; and we can thus, by an examination of the trace made under ...

— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet

... as it seemed almost touching the ship, when the whirling waves round its base made us oscillate from side to side, the Josephine, heeling over to her chain-plates from a sudden rush of wind that appeared to accompany it, the portentous column of vapour darted off almost at right angles to its former course; and then, the cloud, having taken up ...

— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... past speech, saw the immense pile of volumes oscillate, then noiselessly divide, disclosing a ...

— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... relieved, but the word "WARN" was again spelt out. The table then began to oscillate violently, and in reply to Mrs. James, who spoke very softly to the table, the spirit began to spell its ...

— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith

... phase of things—we must consider what has actually been done; not merely what remains to be done. We must adopt proportionate standards, not the little measures of to-day and yesterday, in which the tides of human melioration may oscillate, and even seem to flow backward and at the best to make slight headway. But take up the cycle of history that preceded the advent of Christianity, and compare it with the present period; and is there not an entirely different ...

— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

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