Dictionaries › English

alternate

Pronunciation: /ɒlˈtɜː(ɹ).nət/

The English word “alternate” has 13 meanings listed here.

adjective

  1. Happening by turns; one following the other in succession of time or place; first one and then the other (repeatedly).
  2. Alternating; (of e.g. a pair of tinctures which a charge is coloured) succeeding in turns, or (relative to the field) counterchanged.
  3. Designating the members in a series, which regularly intervene between the members of another series, as the odd or even numbers of the numerals; every other; every second.
  4. Other; alternative.
  5. Distributed singly at different heights of the stem, and at equal intervals as respects angular divergence

noun

  1. That which alternates with something else; vicissitude.
  2. A substitute; an alternative; one designated to take the place of another, if necessary, in performing some duty.
  3. A proportion derived from another proportion by interchanging the means.
  4. A replacement of equal or greater value or function.

verb

  1. To perform by turns, or in succession; to cause to succeed by turns; to interchange regularly.
  2. To happen, succeed, or act by turns; to follow reciprocally in place or time; followed by with.
  3. To vary by turns.
  4. To perform an alternation (removal of alternate vertices) on (a polytope or tessellation); to remove vertices (from a face or edge) as part of an alternation.

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin alternātus, the perfect passive participle of Latin alternō (“to take turns”) (see -ate (1,2 and 3)), from alternus (“one after another, by turns”), from alter (“other”) + -nus. Doublet of altern; see also alter.

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “alternate” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.