Oscillate definitions

ŏs'ə-lāt'
Oscillate is to swing back and forth, either literally or in terms of your opinion, action or mood.

A fan that swings around and around is an example of a fan that oscillates.

When you go from delighted about an idea to angry about the idea and back again, this is an example of a time when you oscillate.

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To swing back and forth with a steady, uninterrupted rhythm.
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To waver, as between conflicting opinions or courses of action; vacillate.
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To vary between alternate extremes, usually within a definable period of time.
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To swing or move regularly back and forth.
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To be indecisive in purpose or opinion; vacillate.
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To vary regularly between maximum and minimum values, as an electric current.
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To cause to oscillate.
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To swing back and forth between the minimum and maximum values. An oscillation is one cycle, typically one complete wave in an alternating frequency.
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Vary predictably, or rhythmically, between two extremes, usually within a set period of time. An alternating current (AC) waveform, for example, oscillates between maximum and minimum electrical values, which are positive voltage (+V) and negative voltage (
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(intransitive) To swing back and forth, especially if with a regular rhythm.

A pendulum oscillates slower as it gets longer.

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(intransitive) To vacillate between conflicting opinions, etc.

The mood for change oscillated from day to day.

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(intransitive) To vary above and below a mean value.
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Origin of oscillate

From Latin oscillatus perfect passive participle of Latin oscillō (“swing"), from oscillum (“a swing"), usually identified with oscillum (“a little face or mask hung to a tree and swaying with the wind"), diminutive of os (“mouth, face").

Sentence Examples

  • The rods are caused to oscillate slowly by an engine, one rising while the other is falling.

  • The two opposing theories express at bottom, in the phraseology of their own time, the radical divergence of pantheism and individualism - the two extremes between which philosophy seems pendulum-wise to oscillate, and which may be said still to await their perfect reconciliation.

  • Linkwoyk in GeneralThe pieces which are connected by linkwork, if they rotate or oscillate, are usually called cranks, beams and levers.

  • Adjust the length of the plumb-line until it and the body oscillate together in unison.

  • Those who work with living forms of which it is possible to obtain a large number of specimens, and those who make revisions of the provisional species of palaeontologists, are slowly coming to some such conception as that a species is the abstract central point around which a group of variations oscillate, and that the peripheral oscillations of one species may even overlap those of an allied species.

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Words near oscillate in the Dictionary