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1960 September, “Talking of Trains: Newcastle signal area enlarged”, in Trains Illustrated, page 522:
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 on alternate shifts.
2021 December 15, Robin Leleux, “Awards honour the best restoration projects: The Arch Company Award for Urban Heritage: Knaresborough”, in RAIL, number 946, page 56:
The service is half-hourly as far as Harrogate and Knaresborough, with alternate 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.
1925, The Jewish Encyclopedia: Chazars-Dreyfus Case, page 128:
Goldschmidt (Austria; creation July 27, 1862): [...] party, argent and gules, an eagle of alternate 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.
(botany, of leaves) Distributed singly at different heights of the stem, and at equal intervals as respects angular divergence[1]
Many trees have alternate leaf arrangement (e.g. birch, oak and mulberry).
Usage notes
In British English this adjective means, according to OED and other sources, one after the other or similar. It does not mean the same as alternative, which OED specifically marks as an American meaning of alternate. In international English it is thus thought better to observe the British distinction: then the meanings of alternative and alternate will be clear to everyone.
That which alternates with something else; vicissitude.
1718, Mat Prior, “Solomon on the Vanity of the World. A Poem in Three Books.”, in Poems on Several Occasions, London: Jacob Tonson, and John Barber, →OCLC, (please specify the page):
Grateful alternates of substantial peace.
(US) A substitute; an alternative; 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, reprinted in 1995, F. Arthur Sherk, Peter Mcmullen, Anthony C. Thompson, Asia Ivić Weiss (editors), Kaleidoscopes: Selected Writings of H. S. M. Coxeter, page 54:
This case suggests that the alternation of a polyhedron should be bounded by actual vertex figures and alternated faces. The case of the cube is in agreement with this notion, since the alternated square is nothing.
^ Asa Gray (1857) “.] Alternate.”, in First Lessons in Botany and Vegetable Physiology,, New York, N.Y.: Ivison & Phinney and G P Putnam & Co.,, →OCLC.