Word.ws English Dictionary

altern

altern adjective: acting by turns; alternate.

Adjective

altern (not comparable)

  1. (obsolete) Acting by turns; alternate.
    • And God made two great lights, great for thir use / To Man, the greater to have rule by day, / The less by night, alterne ; and made the stars, / And set them in the firmament of Heaven / To illuminate the Earth, and rule the day / In their vicissitude, and rule the night, / And light from darkness...1667, John Milton, “Book CLXXXIX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC...

Origin of altern

Borrowed from Latin alternus (“every other, alternate”).

Words formed from altern

  • altern base

Questions about altern

What does altern mean?
Altern means acting by turns; alternate.
What part of speech is altern?
Altern is an adjective.

Words near altern in the dictionary

  1. alterity
  2. altermagnetism
  3. Alterman
  4. Altermans
  5. altermatic
  6. altern
  7. alterna-rock
  8. alterna-teen
  9. alterna-teens
  10. alternacies
  11. alternacy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: altern (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: “altern.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/altern. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.