Fluctuant

a. [ad. L. fluctuant-em, pr. pple. of fluctuāre: see FLUCTUATE v. Cf. F. fluctuant.]

  1.  Moving like the waves; undulating. Chiefly fig., unstable, wavering, changing.

1560.  Rolland, The Court of Venus, III. 171. Howbeit of thame sum part be fluctuant.

a. 1640.  Jackson, Creed, X. xix. Wks. 1844, IX. 115. The first sort did constantly delight in some one or few vices; the other, being of better birth, were fluctuant between virtue or civil honesty and base vices.

1692.  R. L’Estrange, Fables, cccxxv. 396. To change Likings for Loathings, and to stand Wishing and Hankering at a Venture, how is it possible for any Man to be at Rest in this Fluctuant Wandering Humour and Opinion?

1862.  Mrs. Browning, Poems, Where’s Agnnes? xxiv.

	None of these
	Fluctuant curves! but firs and pines,
	Poplars, cedars, cypresses!

1867.  Swinburne, Song Italy, 23.

	In the long sound of fluctuant boughs of trees,
	In the broad breath of seas,
	Bid the sound of thy flying folds be heard.

    Ibid. (1870), Ess. & Stud. (1875), 260. His [Coleridge’s] genius is fluctuant and moonstruck as the sea is, and yet his mind is not, what he described Shakespeare’s to be, ‘an oceanic mind.’

1872.  Dowden, The Idealism of Milton, in Contemporary Review, XIX. Jan., 206. This was not dialogue; there is no giving and taking of ideas, no shifting of positions, no fluctuant moods, no mobility of thought. It was rather debate, a forensic pleading, with counsel on this side and on that.

  2.  Floating on the waves.

1605.  Bacon, Adv. Learn., II. iii. § 1. The times of the militant church; whether it be fluctuant as the ark of Noah, or moveable, as the ark in the wilderness; or at rest, as the ark in the temple; that is, the state of the church in persecution, in remove, and in peace.

1849.  J. Sterling, Thoughts in Rhyme, in Fraser’s Mag., XXXIX. Jan., 111.

	Where change has never urged its fluctuant bark,
	Nor sunless noon has faded into dark.