alternate

1. 1.

   every second one of a series

   “the cleaning lady comes on alternate Wednesdays”

   “jam every other day”

   Similarcyclic
2. 2.

   serving or used in place of another

   “an alternative plan”

   Synonymsalternativesubstitute

   Similarsecondary
3. 3.

   occurring by turns; first one and then the other

   “alternating feelings of love and hate”

   Synonymsalternating

   Similarcyclic
4. 4.

   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”

   Antonymsopposite

   botany

1. 1.

   someone who takes the place of another person

   Synonymssurrogatereplacement

   Broaderstand-in

Other forms of alternate

plural

alternates·

past tense

alternated·

present participle

alternating·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about alternate

What does alternate mean?

alternate means "go back and forth; swing back and forth between two states or conditions". That is the primary sense; the word has 10 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in alternate?

alternate has 3 syllables: al-ter-nate. The stress falls on "al". In IPA it is /ˈɔltɚnət/.

What is another word for alternate?

Close synonyms include jump, understudy, interchange, tack, switch. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of alternate?

The recorded antonyms are opposite.

Is alternate a common word?

alternate is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.