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/ˈɔltərnət/ /ˈɔltərnˌeɪt/ Listen

adjective

Alternate adj.

Being or succeeding by turns; one following the other in succession of time or place; by turns first one and then the other; hence, reciprocal. "And bid alternate passions fall and rise."

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; as, the alternate members 1, 3, 5, 7, etc.; read every alternate line.

(Bot.) Distributed, as leaves, singly at different heights of the stem, and at equal intervals as respects angular divergence.

Alternate alligation. See Alligation.

Alternate angles (Geom.), the internal and angles made by two lines with a third, on opposite sides of it. It the parallels AB, CD, are cut by the line EF, the angles AGH, GHD, as also the angles BGH and GHC, are called alternate angles.

Alternate generation. (Biol.) See under Generation.

verb

Alternate v. t. (past & past part. alternated; pres. part. alternating) To perform by turns, or in succession; to cause to succeed by turns; to interchange regularly. "The most high God, in all things appertaining unto this life, for sundry wise ends alternates the disposition of good and evil."

Alternate v. i.

To happen, succeed, or act by turns; to follow reciprocally in place or time; followed by with; as, the flood and ebb tides alternate with each other. "Rage, shame, and grief alternate in his breast." "Different species alternating with each other."

To vary by turns; as, the land alternates between rocky hills and sandy plains.

noun

Alternate n.

That which alternates with something else; vicissitude. (R.) "Grateful alternates of substantial."

A substitute; one designated to take the place of another, if necessary, in performing some duty.

(Math.) A proportion derived from another proportion by interchanging the means.

See images of 'Alternate'

Etymology of 'Alternate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Alternate" Quotes from Famous Books

... fascination. Once the boy jumped across and brought her back a handkerchief full. They were of two kinds: close to the water's edge the marsh orchis, and farther back, a small marguerite. Out of this they made a crown of the alternate flowers, and a girdle for her waist. That was an evening of rare beauty, and warm enough already for an early chafer to go blooming in the dusk. An evening when they wandered with their arms round each other a ...

— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... with the fingers pointing at right angles to those of the left hand. Imagine that the mountain, on which Praeneste lay, rises in the middle of the back of the upper hand, sinks off to the knuckles of both hands, and extends itself in the alternate ridges and valleys which the fingers and the spaces ...

— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin

... the undying value of the great work, in which the simplest shepherd tales and the naivest legends, profound moral saws and magnificent images, the ideals of a Messianic future and the purest, the most humane conception of life, alternate with sublime descriptions of nature and the sweet strains of love-poems, with national songs breathing hope, or trembling with anguish, and with the dull tones of despairing pessimism and the divinely inspired hymns of an exalted ...

— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... difference appearance from that of the islands we had passed on the way. It is low and level, almost wholly destitute of trees. As we drew nearer we discovered in every direction the marks of its extraordinary cultivation. The cane fields and provision grounds in alternate patches cover the island with one continuous mantle of green. The mansions of the planters, and the clusters of negro houses, appear at shore intervals dotting the face of the island, and giving to it the appearance of a vast village interspersed ...

— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... fourteen pieces into which the mutilated body of Osiris was divided, and the fourteen days during which the body of the builder was buried, to the fourteen days of the disappearance of the moon. The Sabian worshippers of "the hosts of heaven" were impressed with the alternate appearance and disappearance of the moon, which at length became a symbol of death and resurrection. Hence fourteen was a sacred number. As such it was viewed in the Osirian Mysteries, and may have been introduced into Freemasonry with other relics ...

— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

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