alternately
Britishadverb
Explanation
When something happens by turns, first one way and then another, it occurs alternately. You might spend a long train trip alternately gazing out the window and scrolling on your phone. There are two ways to use this adverb: first, to mean "in an alternating pattern," or going back and forth from one thing to another. Spend a race alternately running and stopping to tie your shoes and you're probably not going to win. It also means "here's another possibility," so you might say: "I'm ordering the fish. Alternately, I'll get the fries and a salad." Alternately has a Latin root that means "to do one thing, then the other."
Vocabulary lists containing alternately
Shake It Up: Alter
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Boy 2.0
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When Sea Becomes Sky
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Flippases such as MurJ move molecules by alternately exposing them to each side of the membrane without forming a permanent opening.
From Science Daily • Feb. 28, 2026
The way “asses.masses” shifted tones and tenor recalled a game such as “Kentucky Route Zero,” another serialized and alternately realistic and fanciful game with political overtones.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 10, 2026
Composer Bernard Herrmann’s score, his last, is alternately mellow and roiling, befitting its placid but simmering antihero.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 6, 2026
Early on, the beats are spiky and distorted, and Rocky seems alternately irritated and angry.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 20, 2026
There’s a clown in front of her, a lanky man who alternately does back flips and cartwheels.
From "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
