Definition of "oscillating"

But if he be admitted to have been fixed, as he declares, it admits of proof that he has a species of fixedness belonging to him of a very oscillating kind; which may be best illustrated by that of a ship riding off at sea by a single anchor, which at every turn of the tide swings about, and brings her head round to a point of the compass diametrically opposite to that it stood toward before.

1797, An Address to the Nation, Shewing the Necessity of Forming an Armed Association, in Consequence of the Conspiracy of the Republicans in Ireland to Subvert the Constitution, pages 140–1

In general the experiments proved that in nephritis the secretion of the gastric mucosa is vitiated. This vitiation is exceedingly oscillating.

1891, Joshua M. Van Cott, Jr., “Pathology”, in The Brooklyn Medical Journal, volume 5, page 741

When examining work on the history of sociology, however, one finds a more oscillating pattern: disciplinary marginality, followed by greater centrality, followed by a return to the margins.

2014, Charles Camic, “Periphery toward Center and Back: Scholarship on the History of Sociology, 1945–2012”, in Roger E. Backhouse, Philippe Fontaine, editors, A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences, page 101

Highly oscillating sequences converge in the weak topology, i.e., the topology of convergence of integral means.

2002, Eduard Feireisl, “Viscous and/or heat conducting compressible fluids”, in Susan Friedlander, Denis Serre, editors, Handbook of Mathematical Fluid Dynamics, page 355