alternate

Plural: alternates

Noun

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

Verb

• go back and forth; swing back and forth between two states or conditions
• exchange people temporarily to fulfill certain jobs and functions
• be an understudy or alternate for a role
• reverse (a direction, attitude, or course of action)
• do something in turns
• To perform by turns, or in succession; to cause to succeed by turns; to interchange regularly.
• To happen, succeed, or act by turns; to follow reciprocally in place or time; followed by with.
• To vary by turns.
• 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.

Adjective Satellite

• every second one of a series; ; - the White Queen
  • "the cleaning lady comes on alternate Wednesdays"
• serving or used in place of another
• occurring by turns; first one and then the other

Adjective

• of leaves and branches etc; first on one side and then on the other in two ranks along an axis; not paired
  • "stems with alternate leaves"

Adj

• Happening by turns; one following the other in succession of time or place; first one and then the other (repeatedly).
• Happening by turns; one following the other in succession of time or place; first one and then the other (repeatedly).
• Alternating; (of e.g. a pair of tinctures which a charge is coloured) succeeding in turns, or (relative to the field) counterchanged.
• 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.
• Other; alternative.
• Distributed singly at different heights of the stem, and at equal intervals as respects angular divergence

Examples

• He lives in an alternate universe and an alternate reality.
• Hyperlinked text is displayed in alternate color in a Web browser.
• Many trees have alternate leaf arrangement (e.g. birch, oak and mulberry).
• the alternate members 1, 3, 5, 7, etc.
• The flood and ebb tides alternate with each other.
• The land alternates between rocky hills and sandy plains.

Synonyms

alternating, alternative, flip, flip-flop, interchange, jump, replacement, substitute, surrogate, switch, tack, take turns, understudy, alternate, seesaw

Antonyms

opposite

Related Words

alternation, alternative, every other, every second, variant

Anagrams of alternate