alternate

Etymology

From Latin alternō (“take turns”), from alternus (“one after another, by turns”), from alter (“other”) + -rnus. See altern, alter.

adj

1. Happening by turns; one following the other in succession of time or place; first one and then the other (repeatedly).
   Alternate picking is a guitar playing technique.
   One of the two boxes displaced by the new Pelaw installation will be Springwell, between Boldon Colliery and Pelaw, which has recently had the distinction of being manned by a husband and wife on alternate shifts. 1960 September, “Talking of Trains: Newcastle signal area enlarged”, in Trains Illustrated, page 522
   The service is half-hourly as far as Harrogate and Knaresborough, with alternate trains going on to York. December 15 2021, Robin Leleux, “Awards honour the best restoration projects: The Arch Company Award for Urban Heritage: Knaresborough”, in RAIL, number 946, page 56
   1. (heraldry) Alternating; (of e.g. a pair of tinctures which a charge is coloured) succeeding in turns, or (relative to the field) counterchanged.
      Goldschmidt (Austria; creation July 27, 1862): … party, argent and gules, an eagle of alternate colors, … 1925, The Jewish Encyclopedia: Chazars-Dreyfus Case, page 128
2. (mathematics) 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.
   the alternate members 1, 3, 5, 7, etc.
3. (US) Other; alternative.
   Hyperlinked text is displayed in alternate color in a Web browser.
   He lives in an alternate universe and an alternate reality.
4. (botany, of leaves) Distributed singly at different heights of the stem, and at equal intervals as respects angular divergence
   Many trees have alternate leaf arrangement (e.g. birch, oak and mulberry).

noun

1. That which alternates with something else; vicissitude.
   Grateful alternates of substantial peace.
2. (US) A substitute; an alternative; one designated to take the place of another, if necessary, in performing some duty.
   Corridors beyond this point have collapsed. I'm looking for an alternate. Careful. 25 September 2007, Bungie, Halo 3, v1.0, Microsoft Game Studios, [[w:Xbox 360, level/area: Cortana|Xbox 360, level/area: Cortana]]
3. (mathematics) A proportion derived from another proportion by interchanging the means.
4. (US) A replacement of equal or greater value or function.

verb

1. (transitive) 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. 1701, Nehemiah Grew, Cosmologia Sacra
2. (intransitive) To happen, succeed, or act by turns; to follow reciprocally in place or time; followed by with.
   The flood and ebb tides alternate with each other.
3. (intransitive) To vary by turns.
   The land alternates between rocky hills and sandy plains.
4. (transitive, geometry) 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.
   This case suggests that the alternation of a polyhedron should be bounded by actual vertex figures and alternated faces. The case of the cube is in agreement with this notion, since the alternated square is nothing. 1932, Harold Scott Macdonald Coxeter, The densities of the regular polytopes, part 2, reprinted in 1995, F. Arthur Sherk, Peter Mcmullen, Anthony C. Thompson, Asia Ivić Weiss (editors), Kaleidoscopes: Selected Writings of H. S. M. Coxeter, page 54