Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




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








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Fluctuate" Quotes from Famous Books



... loan the bank enough additional securities as collateral to cover the loan. Don't let it disturb you, Miss Carwell. It is merely a small detail of business that often crops up. Securities in these days so often fluctuate that banks are forced to call for more, and different ones, to cover loans secured by them. I'll attend to the ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

... you is so eternal, why it doesn't fluctuate like a human emotion. You can't exhaust it and rest before a new tide sweeps back; the timeless ecstasy of a worship ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... the very contrary, Mrs. Morgan and her sister will bear witness so far as to say that the longer I abstained the higher my spirits were, the keener my enjoyments, till the moment, the direful moment arrived when my pulse began to fluctuate, my heart to palpitate, and such falling abroad as it were of my whole frame, such intolerable restlessness and incipient bewilderment, that in the last of my several attempts to abandon the dire poison I exclaimed in agony, which I now repeat in seriousness and solemnity, "I am too poor ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... "I'm not sure. Schools fluctuate, you know, and it seems they had scarlet fever about six months ago. That might account for a slight decrease in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... 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 ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... What the manufacturer wants is uniformity and permanency, that he may feel a confidence that he is not to be ruined by sudden changes. But to make a tariff uniform and permanent it is not only necessary that the laws should not be altered, but that the duty should not fluctuate. To effect this all duties should be specific wherever the nature of the article is such as to admit of it. Ad valorem duties fluctuate with the price and offer strong temptations to fraud and perjury. Specific duties, on the contrary, are equal and uniform in all ports and at all times, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson

... salad came utter rout again, and Norma's colour, and heart, and breath, began to fluctuate in a renewed agony of hope and fear. It was only Joseph, leaning deferentially over Judge Lee's shoulder, ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... coalition was to carry them,—for he was the most able, active, and zealous partisan of those changes with which the country was at present threatened. The principles of the noble earl were principles by which any man might safely abide; the principles of Mr. Canning fluctuate daily, and depend upon transitory reasons of temporary expediency. These are the conscientious reasons of my resignation." As for the absurd calumny, that he had threatened the king with his resignation unless ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... polysyllabic nouns ending in {-el}, {-em}, {-en}, {-er}, when their stem-syllable is long, as {mantel}, mantle, {[a]tem}, breath, {morgen}, morning, {acker}, field. Those in {-em}, {-en} generally retain the {e} in the dative plural. Polysyllabic nouns with short stem-syllables fluctuate between the retention or loss of the {e}, as gen. sing. {vogeles} or {vogels}, dat. sing, and nom. acc. pl. {vogele} or {vogel}, and similarly {vadem}, thread, {r[e:]gen}, rain, {sumer}, ...
— A Middle High German Primer - Third Edition • Joseph Wright

... and stationary in my dreams; but great storms and driving mists cause him to fluctuate uncertainly, or even to retire altogether, like his gloomy counterpart the shy Phantom of the Brocken—and to assume new features or strange features, as in dreams always there is a power not contented with reproduction, but which absolutely creates or transforms. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... new and noble solitude; and the waters play a painter's part in setting their splendid subject free. Two movements shake but do not scatter the still night: the bright flashing of constellations in the deep Weir-pool, and the dark flashes of the vague bats flying. The stars in the stream fluctuate with an alien motion. Reversed, estranged, isolated, every shape of large stars escapes and returns, escapes and returns. Fitful in the steady night, those constellations, so few, so whole, and so remote, have a suddenness of gleaming life. You ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... impossible to say that the one attitude is the other. It is correct to say that the one attitude may follow the other. But it is to be misled by language to say that the one attitude becomes the other. It is possible for one and the same man to fluctuate between the two attitudes, to alternate between them—possible, though inconsistent. The child, or even that larger child, the man, may beg and scold, almost in the same breath. The savage, as is well known, will treat his fetish in the same inconsequential way. That it is inconsequential is a ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons

... in France? The Franks have not massacred Visigothic man, woman, and child, from Loire to Garonne. Nay, where their own throne is still set by the Somme, the peat-bred people whom they found there, live there still, though subdued. Frank, or Goth, or Roman may fluctuate hither and thither, in chasing or flying troops: but, unchanged through all the gusts of war, the rural people whose huts they pillage, whose farms they ravage, and over whose arts they reign, must still be diligently, silently, and with no time for ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... UAE has an open economy with one of the world's highest incomes per capita and with a sizable annual trade surplus. Its wealth is based on oil and gas output (about 33% of GDP), and the fortunes of the economy fluctuate with the prices of those commodities. Since 1973, the UAE has undergone a profound transformation from an impoverished region of small desert principalities to a modern state with a high standard ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the face of old days," said Richard in his cordial voice, and taking my hand with the brotherly regard which nothing ever changed, "that I can't make pretences with her. I fluctuate a little; that's the truth. Sometimes I hope, my dear, and sometimes I—don't quite despair, but nearly. I get," said Richard, relinquishing my hand gently and walking ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... is difficult to say—I fluctuate. At times, I feel as though I should drop insensible on the earth, and then I feel better than I have done for ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... "you here? Well, this is strange news, isn't it? For my part, I advise you not to take it too seriously. Your stock will go down, of course, like lead this morning. But it'll rise to-morrow, mark my words, and fluctuate every hour till the discovery's proved or disproved for certain. There's a fine time coming for operators, I feel sure. Reports this way and that. Rumours, rumours, rumours. And nobody will know which way to believe till ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... poetic forms, is still responsible for the evolution of new forms. Neither stress nor syllabic weight is a very keen psychologic factor in the dynamics of French. The syllable has great inherent sonority and does not fluctuate significantly as to quantity and stress. Quantitative or accentual metrics would be as artificial in French as stress metrics in classical Greek or quantitative or purely syllabic metrics in English. French ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... proportion of 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, or ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot

... Wasp; nevertheless her presence is repeated often enough to show that the huntress appreciates the value of this prey when she comes across it. The three sorts of game are in the larval state, with rudimentary wings. Their dimensions, which vary a good deal, fluctuate between two-fifths and four-fifths of an ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... than doubt. The love of truth and the consciousness of that certainty would raise me above hatred and slander. I should then have some kind of principle by which to regulate my conduct; I should then know on what foundation to build. To fluctuate, to waver, to postpone inquiry, was more criminal than any kind of opinion candidly investigated and firmly adopted, and would more effectually debar me from happiness. At my age, with my talents and inducements, it was sordid, it was ignoble, it was culpable, to allow indifference or indolence ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... breeder is quite indifferent to, and never intentionally selects, any modification in the skeleton. External characters, if not attended to by man, such as the number of the tail and wing feathers and their relative lengths, which in wild birds are generally constant,—fluctuate in our domestic fowls in the same manner as the several parts of the skeleton. An additional toe is a "point" in Dorkings, and has become a fixed character, but is variable in Cochins and Silk fowls. The colour of the plumage and the form of the comb are in ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... always. For the price of sheep and wool could go down by leaps and bounds, as well as up; the progeny of the ewes bought for 30s. each in 1862 might have to go at 5s. each in 1868, and greasy wool might fluctuate in value as much as 6d. a lb. Two or three bad years would deliver over the poor squatter as bond-slave to some bank, mortgage company or merchant, to whom he had been paying at least 10 per cent. interest, plus 21/2 per cent. commission ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... whirl, revolve, rotate, turn, gyrate, spin, trundle, circumgyrate; inwrap, infold, convolve; wallow, welter; rock, sway, lurch, titubate, fluctuate. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming



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



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com