interchange
Americanverb (used with object)
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interchanges,
present (3rd person singular)
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interchanged,
past participle, past
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interchanging
present participle
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to put each in the place of the other.
to interchange pieces of modular furniture.
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to cause (one thing) to change places with another; transpose.
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to give and receive (things) reciprocally; exchange.
The twins interchanged clothes frequently.
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to cause to follow one another alternately; alternate.
to interchange business cares with pleasures.
verb (used without object)
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interchanges,
present (3rd person singular)
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interchanged,
past participle, past
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interchanging
present participle
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to occur by turns or in succession; alternate.
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to change places, as two persons or things, or as one with another.
noun
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interchanges
plural
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an act or instance of interchanging; reciprocal exchange.
the interchange of commodities.
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a changing of places, as between two persons or things, or of one with another.
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alternation; alternate succession.
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a highway intersection consisting of a system of several different road levels arranged so that vehicles may move from one road to another without crossing the streams of traffic.
verb
noun
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the act of interchanging; exchange or alternation
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a motorway junction of interconnecting roads and bridges designed to prevent streams of traffic crossing one another
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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interchangeabilitynoun
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interchangernoun
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preinterchangenoun
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interchangeableadjective
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interchangeablyadverb
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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interchangesimple
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interchangessimple
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have interchangedperfect
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has interchangedperfect
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am interchangingprogressive
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are interchangingprogressive
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is interchangingprogressive
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have been interchangingperfect progressive
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has been interchangingperfect progressive
Past
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interchangedsimple
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had interchangedperfect
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was interchangingprogressive
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were interchangingprogressive
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had been interchangingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of interchange
1325–75; inter- + change; replacing Middle English entrechaungen < Middle French entrechangier
Explanation
To interchange two things is to trade or switch them. If the painting hanging on your wall just doesn't fit the room, you can interchange it with the photograph on the opposite wall. When you're baking a pie, you can usually interchange one kind of fruit for another, or interchange tapioca for cornstarch to thicken the filling. When interchange is a noun, it has various meanings including "highway intersection," or the place where these busy roads meet each other. This road meaning dates only from the 1940s, while the "change places" meaning is at least 400 years old.
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.
See Examples For:
The incident occurred around 11:20 p.m. on the wide, curving interchange road that connects the eastbound 105 Freeway to the southbound 110 Freeway leading to San Pedro, the CHP said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 4, 2026
So-called interchange fees are paid by merchants when consumers shop with their debit cards and are mostly pocketed by banks and other financial institutions that issue those cards.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 6, 2026
A major incident was declared when two EMR services to London St Pancras collided at 17:15 BST, just south of Elstow, near the road interchange of the A421 and A6.
From BBC ● Jun. 21, 2026
In October 2023, Moreno was found dead near the Interstate 5 and State Route 905 interchange.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 11, 2026
I slash a highway across the center of the page and make it meet with another in a beautiful spaghetti interchange.
From "It’s Kind of a Funny Story" by Ned Vizzini
Together these two observations summarize “Where the Music Had to Go,” Jim Windolf’s engrossing take on the playful and sometimes competitive interchanges that occurred over the years between Mr. Dylan and the Beatles.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 8, 2026
The revamp began with construction of three imposing new bridges spanning the Ebrie Lagoon and several road interchanges.
From Barron's ● Oct. 21, 2025
Crews will be working to widen Interstate 90 between the Cabin Creek and West Easton interchanges southwest of the Snoqualmie summit, according to a news release from the Washington State Department of Transportation.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 24, 2024
The second goal in particular showed the best of that, with the rapid Summerville set away by cute interchanges of possession between Piroe and Rutter before his cross went in via Davis.
From BBC ● Dec. 23, 2023
Except that here the cars were driving above and under each other as if they were on interchanges that were stacked ten storeys high.
From "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel
The last third of your book is so completely like “The Grapes of Wrath” that the families and characters might basically be interchanged in the two.
From Salon ● Oct. 15, 2024
It sometimes gets mistakenly interchanged with “Latino” or “Latinx.”
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 15, 2023
First, they found the phone number the government lists for its hotline is inaccurate, with two numbers interchanged.
From Washington Times ● May 31, 2018
If we interchange the input and output of each coordinate pair of a function, the interchanged coordinate pairs would appear on the graph of the inverse function.
From Textbooks ● Feb. 13, 2015
He was talking to the gods or the ancestors; I remembered Aunty Ifeoma saying that the two could be interchanged.
From "Purple Hibiscus" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
By morning the fires had largely been contained, but interchanging winds caused intermittent flare-ups.
From Reuters ● Aug. 7, 2023
The Sounders need goals and maybe interchanging playmakers in Rusnak and Lodeiro is better than continuing to mash them together.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 18, 2023
Realistically, United's ambitions are less lofty and they already have a number of fast international forwards who, presumably, are capable of interchanging.
From BBC ● Jul. 8, 2022
At first, Jungnickel said, the Americans considered a combination of pushing and interchanging the front skater.
From New York Times ● Feb. 11, 2022
They were sung to a musical accompaniment, and were composed chiefly in bacchiac, anapaestic, or cretic metres, rapidly interchanging with trochaic lines.
From The Roman Poets of the Republic by W. Y. Sellar
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.
