1Move or swing back and forth in a regular rhythm.

1. 1.1with adverbial Vary or fluctuate between two states, limits, opinions, etc.
   he was oscillating between fear and bravery

   Example sentencesExamples

   • I came in this morning feeling kind of fragile and oscillating between paying attention to see how I was feeling and trying not to think about it for fear that panicking would make it worse.
   • He'll oscillate back and forth between a discussion of eastern philosophies and a discussion of particle physics.
   • In the synonymy of slippery speech, to waffle, waver, oscillate, vacillate is ‘to swing back and forth between opinions.’
   • Really, why bother having any policies then if you keep oscillating between denial of serious policy, and then saying you are going to make changes.
   • Sometimes oscillating between the lives of the people I work with, the people I write about and my own life, everything starts to feel fictional.
   • Much of the modern study of El Greco might be described as oscillating between two extremes - either a sharp focus on the attribution of his works, or a discursive handling of the historiography of the artist's personality and image.
   • The shows are a real pot luck option, oscillating between greatest hits group shows and ill-advised solo outings.
   • Intellectually, Alex understands that the relationship was wrong, but his emotions oscillate back and forth through a full spectrum of feeling.
   • The three characters interact on several levels, oscillating between acknowledgment and denial of the event that has brought them together.
   • So, while living on this beautiful planet, one is conditioned to oscillate like a pendulum about the importance of love in life.
   • Bipolar Disorder, also known as manic depressive psychosis is a serious mental disorder characterized by cyclic mood swings, the patient oscillates between extreme sadness and happiness.
   • This can cause the players' strategies to oscillate back and forth indefinitely.
   • They oscillate back and forth between the Church and party officials, depending on which side is more convincing at a time.
   • He was oscillating between hope and fear, depression and elation.
   • The pendulum of European policy-making thus oscillates between the national and the European arenas, and sometimes between them and the international level.
   • Everything is in a never-ending state of flux, oscillating between life and death, mocking our every attempt at permanence.
   • I'm oscillating between being very up and very down; very silly and very sensible; manic and very lazy; happier than I've been for ages and on the verge of tears.
   • Americans oscillate back and forth between a strong desire to either transform ‘alien’ things or withdraw from them; we cannot live comfortably side by side with them, as they are.
   • The perversity of his relationship with Busch, whom he patronises and desires, and her feelings for him - oscillating between hatred and tenderness - come into focus here too - powerfully but too late.
   • In an era when the pendulum of power and wealth has oscillated between players and clubs, Carey has conducted himself at all times with dignity and a determination never to take anything for granted.

   Synonyms

   waver, swing, fluctuate, alternate, see-saw, veer, yo-yo, sway, go from one extreme to the other, vary, vacillate, teeter, hover

   informal wobble, blow hot and cold

2Physics
Vary in magnitude or position in a regular manner about a central point.

1. 2.1 (of a circuit or device) cause the electric current or voltage running through it to vary in magnitude or position in a regular manner about a central point.
   Example sentencesExamples

   • Using Josephson junctions, scientists can create wave patterns in electrical currents that oscillate back and forth billions of times per second, mimicking the natural oscillations between quantum states in atoms.
   • We suggest that ash-laden vertical density currents probably attain and then oscillate about a characteristic size that maximizes the buoyancy flux and represents the optimum efficiency for vertical mass transport.
   • Alternating Current simply means that the voltage oscillates between positive and negative.
   • The electrical field of the pulse oscillates, first driving an electron away from its atom, then causing it to reverse direction and smash into the atom.
   • The capacitors had charges oscillating, inductors had currents oscillating, all at the same frequency…
   • The frequency chip is oscillated by static electricity produced by the body [of the user] inhaling and exhaling gases into and out of the lung cavity.
   • The system works, says Eleftherios Goulielmakis of the Max Planck Institute, because the electrons come in pulses of 250 as, while the electric field oscillates at 2.5 fs.
   • This induced voltage drives a secondary oscillating current in the conductive body, also at the same frequency as the primary, but with a phase difference that depends on the electrical properties of the conductor.
   • A phenomenon called self-induction is at work here: as the current oscillates, the magnetic field around the wire changes, too, inducing voltages that slow the oscillation.
   • Subsequently Jonathan Ashmore, then at Bristol University, measured the speed of the outer-hair-cell motor and showed that it could respond to oscillating voltages at several kilohertz.
   • Quantum whistling is analogous to a phenomenon in another macroscopic quantum system, a superconductor, which develops an oscillating current when a voltage is applied across a non-conducting gap.
   • When sufficient gsl is present, it drives fast bursting, and as a result the slow s2 current does not have enough time to oscillate.
   • The electric field reverses direction, or oscillates, every 15 minutes.
   • Both of these circuits oscillate with the same frequency as growth but are temporally out-of-phase with respect to the start of the growth cycle.
   • When an AC voltage applied to one of the electrodes matches the resonance frequency of the arm - specifically between 350 and 400MHz in this example - the arm will oscillate between the electrodes.
   • An oscillating voltage created an electric field across the gap to accelerate the particles each time around.
   • Figure 2 Map of spectral absorption wavelengths across a wafer shows an absorption dip indicating the Fabry-Perot wavelength at which the laser will oscillate.
   • ‘To push beyond the gigahertz range of frequencies has been very difficult because the waves oscillate so fast that most electronics can't keep up,’ Nori said.
   • When excited by energy from a laser, these cantilevers oscillate at frequencies of around 11 to 12 Megahertz (MHz).
   • A simple device might oscillate at 1Hz (once per second), therefore 1 second would elapse for each oscillation.