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alternation.

The reciprocal succession of (normally two) things in time or place; the act of following and being followed by turns; alternate succession, performance, or occurrence

11 characters4 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈɒl.tə(ɹ)ˌneɪ.ʃən/UK/ˈɔl.tɚˌneɪ.ʃən/US/ˈɑl.tɚˌneɪ.ʃən/US
  1. The reciprocal succession of (normally two) things in time or place; the act of following and being followed by turns; alternate succession, performance, or occurrence

    countable · uncountable
    the alternation of day and night
    alternation of summer and winter
  2. The response of the congregation speaking alternately with the minister.

    countable · uncountable
  3. Ablaut.

    countable · uncountable
  4. A pattern by which more than one construct is possible, as with "Alice cooked Bob dinner" and "Alice cooked dinner for Bob".

    countable · uncountable
    dative alternation; locative alternation
  5. The "inclusive or" truth function.

    countable · uncountable
  6. A sequence that alternates between positive and negative values.

    countable · uncountable
  7. A permutation.

    countable · proscribed · uncountable
  8. A construct in a regular expression that can match any of several specified subexpressions.

    countable · uncountable
  9. A type of partial truncation of a polygon, polyhedron or tiling in which alternate vertices are removed.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

Learned borrowing from Latin alternatio; compare French alternation. By surface analysis, alternate + -ion.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.