adj, verb ·4 syllables ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Verb

1. 1
   present participle and gerund of alternate form-of, gerund, participle, present

Adjective

1. 1
   That alternates. not-comparable

   "alternating motion"

2. 2
   Having a planar diagram whose crossings alternate between "over" and "under" as one travels along the knot. not-comparable
3. 3
   Having terms that alternate between positive and negative. not-comparable
4. 4
   Whose value is zero when any two adjacent arguments are equal. not-comparable

Adjective

1. 1
   occurring by turns; first one and then the other wordnet
2. 2
   (of a current) reversing direction wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

adriftafloatalternateamorphouscapriciouschangeable

Antonyms

All antonyms

direct

Example

More examples

"It was a week of alternating snow and rain."

Related phrases

alternating Turing machinealternating capsalternating casealternating currentalternating series test

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.