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Glite Dictionary
🔄 A substitute 🔁 To take turns 🔁 Every other 👤 A replacement 🌿 Staggered pattern
alternate

alternate

17 6.0
Arranged one after another along a stem not in pairs
  • adjective
  • /ˈɔːltərnɪt/
  • Specialized
translation icon : alterno
  • Now you see these alternating prongs, right and left.

Examples

  • Germans paid him to make a reconnaissance of Voi in 1905, again in 1906, and every alternate year since.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • So we will call roughly on people on alternate sides of the room by passing them the mics.

  • Another step would be to develop alternate forms of the NSB for repeated use.

    Academic text (2010)

  • Some of the original manuscripts contain alternate words or phrases between the lines or in the margins.

    Academic text (2009)

  • The leaves on the tree are arranged in an alternate fashion, with one leaf on one side and the next on the other.

  • The alternate branches of the plant create a beautiful asymmetrical pattern along its trunk.

  • In this design, the flowers are planted in an alternate sequence to enhance the visual appeal of the garden.

Antonyms

opposite
199 1.0

Facing each other or arranged in matching pairs on each side

paired
2.5

Two things that match and go together

Surface Forms

alternate positive
alternating comparative

Morphology

alternate = altern + ate

The botanical meaning ('arranged one after the other along an axis') is a literal application of the 'altern-' notion of alternating positions and is thus transparent.

Etymology

Alternate comes from the Latin root alter, which means 'other', and it gives the image of things placed 'one after the other' along a line. So in botany alternate leaves are set in turn on different sides of the stem, not in pairs.