interchange
Americanverb (used with object)
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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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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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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:
An air ambulance was dispatched as part of the emergency response to the collision, which happened just south of Elstow, near the the road interchange of the A421 and A6.
From BBC ● Jun. 19, 2026
In October 2023, Moreno was found dead near the Interstate 5 and State Route 905 interchange.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 11, 2026
The restaurant receives a slightly smaller sum, excluding the interchange fee calculated as a percentage of the total amount and other fees.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 1, 2026
Banks say the so-called interchange fees fund rewards like travel points and cash back that consumers love, as well as services like fraud prevention.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 1, 2026
He retailed to them the curious interchange of phrases he had overheard on the journey from Aleppo.
From "Murder on the Orient Express" by Agatha Christie
Some industry insiders say it doesn’t require a merger to speed up transit times and minimize truck movements at interchanges.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 16, 2025
"We Ivorians never imagined we could have bridges, interchanges, and major roads like this!" exclaimed Moustapha, a tour guide, during a long guided tour for AFP of the city.
From Barron's ● Oct. 21, 2025
Transport for Greater Manchester said they would be gritting bus stations and interchanges, and running trams overnight to keep overhead lines clear of frost.
From BBC ● Nov. 18, 2024
“There are some groups out there that want to spend billions and billions and billions of dollars on more, bigger, wider interchanges across the state,” Walker said at the time.
From Slate ● Aug. 28, 2024
It’s not a brain, clearly; it’s a map; can’t she see the rivers and highways and interchanges?
From "It’s Kind of a Funny Story" by Ned Vizzini
Her hair matches this with a long wavy, dense wig that gets interchanged with her game-day hair, a long, single, tight braid, which Gattabrusi called a "powerful hairdo."
From Salon ● May 7, 2024
The team has already interchanged forwards in Heber and Ruidiaz this season due to hamstring injuries.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 24, 2023
They also have interchanged military and defense institutions with civilian institutions, he said.
From Washington Times ● Jan. 6, 2021
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
“We feel confident that we can keep interchanging different players there and they can go out and provide the same contributions and do the same job for us.”
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 27, 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
We passed a quarter of an hour in close examination of each other, interchanging as well as we could a few Russian words which very inadequately expressed our thoughts.
From Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century by Adams, W. H. Davenport
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.
