Word.ws English Dictionary

fluctuating

fluctuating is the present participle and gerund of fluctuate.

Meaning of fluctuate

Verb

fluctuate (third-person singular simple present fluctuates, present participle fluctuating, simple past and past participle fluctuated)

  1. (intransitive) To vary irregularly; to swing.
  2. (intransitive) To undulate.
    • One of them, at great Expence of Algebra, proves, that the Motes, which in Scotomias, we seem to have in our Eyes, are not real Bodies fluctuating in them.1719, William Vickers, An easie and safe method for curing the King's Evil, page 39
  3. (intransitive) To be irresolute; to waver.
    • I fluctuated between wishing he was back home and wishing I'd never met him.
  4. (transitive) To cause to vary irregularly.
  5. (also, figuratively, literally, rare) To rise and fall as a wave; to be tossed up and down the waves.

See all 7 meanings of fluctuate

Adjective

fluctuating (comparative more fluctuating, superlative most fluctuating)

  1. Subject to irregular changes in quantity or quality.
    • ...they sat down beside the hearth in the adjoining room, over which the embers of the wood-fire cast a fluctuating light; now the long shadows falling duskily around—now dispersing them with bursts of brilliant flame, as the lighter wood kindled into a short-lived blaze.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter X, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 105
    • From these remarks it will be seen that I look at the term species, as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms.1859, Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

Noun

fluctuating (plural fluctuatings)

  1. A fluctuation.

Forms of fluctuating

Adjective
comparativemore fluctuating
superlativemost fluctuating
Noun
pluralfluctuatings

Words formed from fluctuating

Questions about fluctuating

What does fluctuating mean?
Fluctuating means subject to irregular changes in quantity or quality.
What is fluctuating the present participle and gerund of?
Fluctuating is the present participle and gerund of fluctuate.
What part of speech is fluctuating?
Fluctuating can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near fluctuating in the dictionary

  1. fluctuater
  2. fluctuaters
  3. fluctuates
  4. fluctuatest
  5. fluctuateth
  6. fluctuating
  7. fluctuatingly
  8. fluctuatings
  9. fluctuation
  10. fluctuation theorem
  11. fluctuational

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fluctuating (page history and authors); fluctuate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “fluctuating.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fluctuating. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.