What's the difference between irresolute and vacillating?

Irresolute


Definition:

  • (a.) Not resolute; not decided or determined; wavering; given to doubt or irresolution.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The number of irresolute responses was significantly decreased following administration of diazepam, SZJ 3388 and Litoralon and was positively correlated with the TEE latency-decreasing activity of these compounds.
  • (2) Right-wing Catholics denounced him as irresolute on issues like Aids, the defence of Catholic schools, and political priests like Mgr Bruce Kent (who later resigned).
  • (3) The White House is considered irresolute on Guantánamo, lacking the force or the desire to impose a coherent policy upon the bureaucracy.
  • (4) At these patients we saw significantly more "valve groups", which witness to the irresolution in the instinctive motivations of behaviour.
  • (5) Smith and his cronies were kept in power by a combination of white redoubt solidarity in southern Africa, deep divisions among Rhodesian-African tribal groups and guerrilla movements, irresolution in London, inertia and insincerity elsewhere - and a small group of white Rhodesian, South African and British army officers, police, security men and sanctions-busters whose cunning knew no bounds.
  • (6) However, its influence on the development of breast cancer and cervical cancer remains irresolute pending further research.
  • (7) To be European is to be somehow effeminate, irresolute and, perhaps worst of all, socialist.
  • (8) Or are we going be profligate again, spend money we don’t have again, borrow forever, mortgage the future of children with the debts we could not pay ourselves, and consign Britain to a future of a high debt, low growth?” Describing Labour as the party of permanent fiscal irresponsibility, he said the charter would bear down on the “irresolution of politicians who lack the discipline to control public spending and deliver growth”.
  • (9) But these words – reconciliation and resolution – are also lies, for what I found, in the absence of reckoning for these refugees and survivors, was post-conflict irresolution.
  • (10) And veteran Observer readers, perhaps, may be forgiven for wondering what the Orwell of Homage to Catalonia would have said today as he surveyed such a panoply of irresolution.
  • (11) Harold Hobson declared that he had "never seen a Hamlet more shot through with the pale agony of irresolution."
  • (12) (The exhibition captioning and catalogue toy with this tactic extensively, if irresolutely, mythologically annotating every scribble and grunt: quite frankly, they're best ignored.)
  • (13) Many, although not all, of the challenges in communities today are informed by the irresolution of unfinished business.

Vacillating


Definition:

  • (p. pr. & vb. n.) of Vacillate
  • (a.) Inclined to fluctuate; wavering.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Significant associations were found in the relationship of suicide potential to verbal attack by spouse (p = .03), vacillation in the last two weeks (p = .02), and vacillation since the first serious discussion of divorce (p = .02).
  • (2) On reversed sequences they vacillated between reproducing the events as modeled and "correcting" them to canonical order.
  • (3) Culture conditions may provide an environment that permits proliferating glial cells to vacillate in their selection of a specific lineage.
  • (4) Trump had criticised Obama for vacillation and weakness.
  • (5) Relations between the White House and Congress have vacillated between close coordination one moment and leaving the other in the dark the next.
  • (6) Traditionally, NGOs vacillate between guilt and hope in their communications.
  • (7) Stuck between the cultist Friends of Radio 3 and Global Radio’s sprightly three-times-the-size Classic FM, the network vacillates between populist copying and public service broadcasting stodge.
  • (8) When first confronted by Arab political revolutions, Britain vacillated, reluctant to abandon useful and grubby friendship with corrupt regimes.
  • (9) Later she acquiesced in Ronald Reagan's decision to bomb Gaddafi, and famously told George Bush senior not to go wobbly on her as he vacillated over ousting Saddam's forces, which had invaded Kuwait.
  • (10) Chancellor George Osborne has made it even harder for small businesses to compete against multinationals by cutting the corporate tax rate, and presided over a collapse in business investment, particularly in the hugely promising 'green sector', which has suffered hugely from the government's inept vacillating on energy policy.
  • (11) He isn't, as Miliband is accused of being, weak, vacillating, unadventurous and academic.
  • (12) Much of his work in the last half of his life, and much of his continuing happiness, was inspired by Penny the second, whose enormous strengths of decency and determination creatively challenged his own vacillation and reluctance to make moral judgments.
  • (13) As one works through the stressful event, the victim vacillates between intrusion and avoidance, with the magnitude of those oscillations being much stronger at first.
  • (14) Major procedures included object permanence, vacillation, memory for locations and pictures, and reaction to unfamiliar adults and to separation.
  • (15) In Study 2, conducted four-months after Study 1, stable pairs (20 maintained mutual, MM) and vacillating ones (six growing mutual, GM; 11 decayed mutual, DM) were selected.
  • (16) Mitt Romney has expressed qualified concern about climate change over the years, and then vacillated about how much of it is human-caused and whether we should try to do anything about it.
  • (17) In the space of just a few weeks Moscow has been making the weather on the crisis – by seizing the initiative where the US and others have vacillated and failed.
  • (18) The cast of The Five vacillated between feigned solemnity and jocular NFL pregame oafishness.
  • (19) Most patients showed little denial throughout the period of observation, but more vulnerable patients tended to vacillate between denial and acceptance.
  • (20) Gerwig played the vacillating temptress in Hannah Takes the Stairs , the long-distance lover in Nights and Weekends , a jittery scream queen in the Duplass brothers’ Baghead .