What does alternate mean in English?

You can learn alternate Pronunciation, Grammar & Synonyms in this most authoritative English Dictionary.

alternate Meaning, Definition, Pronunciation, Grammar & Synonyms❤️

0 to happen or exist one after the other repeatedly:
- She alternated between cheerfulness and deep despair.
- He alternated working in the office with long tours overseas.
1 with first one thing, then another thing, and then the first thing again:
- a dessert with alternate layers of chocolate and cream
- Private cars are banned from the city on alternate days.
2 a person or thing that can take the place of another:
- David was too sick to attend, so Janet served as his alternate.
3 to cause two things to happen or exist one after the other:
- [ I ] The children alternated between being excited and being tired.
- [ T ] I like to alternate physical and intellectual activities.
4 every second, or every other:
- I visit my father on alternate weekends.
5 one that can take the place of another:
- David was too sick to attend, so Janet served as his alternate.
6 a person who does another person's job when they are ill or away:
- He was dismissed and replaced with an alternate.

In this type of mental illness, the usual pattern is bouts of depression alternating with elation.
Throughout the holiday, the weather alternated between rain and sunshine every day.
She swam up and down, alternating between crawl and backstroke.
Saturdays at the club alternate between 1970s disco and house/garage.
The area boasts miles of unspoilt coastline alternating between cliffs and sandy beaches.
An alternating pattern may result, for example, from a cyclic component with a period of about 2 days; persisting patterns may arise in several ways.
We want to program a two-person finite game where the players must perform alternate legal moves, until one of them, the loser, cannot move.
The target dose for purely ocular myasthenia is up to 0.75 mg/kg bodyweight on alternate days.

0 Alternate(ly), alternative(ly)
1 Alternate(ly)

The adjective alternate and the adverb alternately mean ‘first one thing, then another thing and then the first thing again’. When we refer to time, we can also use the phrase every other day, every other week, etc.
2 Alternative(ly)

Alternative(ly) means ‘something that is different and unusual and offers a possible choice’: