Happening by turns; one following the other insuccession of time or place; first one and then the other (repeatedly).
1711 May, [Alexander Pope],An Essay on Criticism, London:[…] W[illiam] Lewis[…]; and sold by W[illiam] Taylor[…], T[homas] Osborn[e][…], and J[ohn] Graves[…],→OCLC:
And bidalternate passions fall and rise
1960 September, “Talking of Trains: Newcastle signal area enlarged”, inTrains Illustrated, page522:
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 onalternate shifts.
2021 December 15, Robin Leleux, “Awards honour the best restoration projects: The Arch Company Award for Urban Heritage: Knaresborough”, inRAIL, number946, page56:
The service is half-hourly as far as Harrogate and Knaresborough, withalternate trains going on to York.
(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 ofalternate colors, [...]
(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.
According to the OED and other sources, the meaning "alternative" is mainly American English, it is thus thought better not to use it this way in International English.
That which alternates with something else;vicissitude.
1718,Mat[thew] Prior, “Solomon on the Vanity of the World. A Poem in Three Books.”, inPoems on Several Occasions, London:[…]Jacob Tonson[…], and John Barber[…],→OCLC,(please specify the page):
Gratefulalternates of substantial peace.
(US) Asubstitute; analternative; one designated to take the place of another, if necessary, in performing some duty.
1932,Harold Scott Macdonald Coxeter,The densities of the regular polytopes, part 2[1], reprinted in 1995, F. Arthur Sherk, Peter Mcmullen, Anthony C. Thompson, Asia Ivić Weiss (editors),Kaleidoscopes: Selected Writings of H. S. M. Coxeter, page54:
This case suggests that the alternation of a polyhedron should be bounded by actual vertex figures andalternated faces. The case of the cube is in agreement with this notion, since thealternated square is nothing.
