What's the difference between sway and vacillate?

Sway


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To move or wield with the hand; to swing; to wield; as, to sway the scepter.
  • (v. i.) To influence or direct by power and authority; by persuasion, or by moral force; to rule; to govern; to guide.
  • (v. i.) To cause to incline or swing to one side, or backward and forward; to bias; to turn; to bend; warp; as, reeds swayed by wind; judgment swayed by passion.
  • (v. i.) To hoist; as, to sway up the yards.
  • (v. i.) To be drawn to one side by weight or influence; to lean; to incline.
  • (v. i.) To move or swing from side to side; or backward and forward.
  • (v. i.) To have weight or influence.
  • (v. i.) To bear sway; to rule; to govern.
  • (n.) The act of swaying; a swaying motion; the swing or sweep of a weapon.
  • (n.) Influence, weight, or authority that inclines to one side; as, the sway of desires.
  • (n.) Preponderance; turn or cast of balance.
  • (n.) Rule; dominion; control.
  • (n.) A switch or rod used by thatchers to bind their work.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) By adjustment to the swaying movements of the horse, the child feels how to retain straightening alignment, symmetry and balance.
  • (2) It is proposed that microoscillations of the eye increase the threshold for detection of retinal target displacements, leading to less efficient lateral sway stabilization than expected, and that the threshold for detection of self motion in the A-P direction is lower than the threshold for object motion detection used in the calculations, leading to more efficient stabilization of A-P sway.
  • (3) The influence of vestibular dysfunction upon the vestibulospinal reflex (VSR) in two common peripheral syndromes was investigated by two types of posturographic examination: "static" posturography, recording and analyzing the postural sway in stance, and "kinetic" posturography, recording the stepping in place test.
  • (4) A sweet-talking man in a suit who enlists the most successful barrister in town holds remarkable sway, I’ve learned.
  • (5) Few in Moscow are likely to be swayed by that explanation, however.
  • (6) His balancing pole swayed uncontrollably, nearly tapping the sides of his feet.
  • (7) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Trump ‘sways malevolently’ behind Hillary Clinton Instead, he began the night by assembling a group of women in a press conference to revisit alleged sexual assaults by Bill Clinton, before confronting his opponent hardest on her private email server.
  • (8) Diane Abbott , part of Ed Miliband's senior team, has accused Labour of being swayed by populist Tory attacks on immigration instead of standing up for diversity.
  • (9) In analogy to tip-toeing movements, it is concluded that the coactivation pattern is typical for stance conditions with a restricted area of support in order to reduce body sway.
  • (10) In these phases, it was necessary to compensate for sway induced by body inertia.
  • (11) If any donor held such sway over the Tories as Unite has over Labour, there would deservedly be an outcry.
  • (12) A sine wave current stimulus, applied between electrodes placed about one ear and an indifferent electrode, produced a cyclical sway predominantly in the coronal plane.
  • (13) When we meet him again in the film, he’s still working at the police station, still able to be swayed by a good slice of pizza.
  • (14) However, an important relationship between sway and falls was revealed.
  • (15) Despite spending a record amount of money to sway the mid-term US elections, environmental groups and high-profile donors failed to avert a sweeping Republican victory last week, in which candidates opposing the regulation of greenhouse gases and championing the expansion of tar sands pipelines won big.
  • (16) (c) Motion aftereffect had no direct and immediate influence on sway path, but rather a latent and long-term effect.
  • (17) The results showed unstable body sway in the condition with eyes closed until at least 4 months after the operation.
  • (18) On the other hand, information on the direction of the expected body sway given in the visual fixation condition resulted in a considerable and approximately equal decrease of the two components (by 70-80 percent).
  • (19) Neuropsychologic and postural sway test performance improved following Ca(++)-EDTA chelation in a bridge worker with persistent central nervous system (CNS) symptoms 2 years after an episode of subacute lead intoxication.
  • (20) Sway activity was found to be significantly higher in the CCI group as compared with that of the normal controls.

Vacillate


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To move one way and the other; to reel or stagger; to waver.
  • (v. t.) To fluctuate in mind or opinion; to be unsteady or inconstant; to waver.

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 .