Word.ws English Dictionary

altering

altering is the present participle and gerund of alter.

Meaning of alter

Verb

alter (third-person singular simple present alters, present participle altering, simple past and past participle altered)

  1. (ambitransitive) To change the form or structure of.
    • Near-synonym: tweak
    Synonyms:
    tweak
  2. (intransitive) To become different.
    • […] Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul, / Victorious song, death’s outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song, […]1865, Walt Whitman, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”, in Sequel to Drum-Taps: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d and other poems
  3. (transitive) To tailor clothes to make them fit.
  4. (transitive) To castrate, neuter or spay (a dog or other animal).
  5. (transitive) To affect mentally, as by psychotropic drugs or illness.
    • We don't know if he was altered on alcohol or drugs or anything […]2016 February 10, Sydney Pruitt and Claire Ricke (quoting Jeff Barrick), "Police: Man lying in street hit, killed by Capital Metro bus", KXAN

See all 6 meanings of alter

Noun

altering (plural alterings)

  1. alteration
    • And stand steadfast in the unchangeable life and seed of God, which was before changings and alterings were; and which will remain when they all are gone.1654, George Fox, epistle LXXVI

Forms of altering

pluralalterings

Phrases with altering

Questions about altering

What does altering mean?
Altering means alteration.
What is altering the present participle and gerund of?
Altering is the present participle and gerund of alter.
What part of speech is altering?
Altering is a noun.
What is the plural of altering?
The plural of altering is alterings.

Words near altering in the dictionary

  1. alterglobalisation
  2. alterglobalization
  3. alterhuman
  4. alterhumanity
  5. alterhumans
  6. altering
  7. altering or changing
  8. alteringly
  9. alterings
  10. alteriority
  11. alterite

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: altering (page history and authors); alter (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “altering.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/altering. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.